Blog

4IR: Reinventing a Nation

4IR: Reinventing a Nation

I recently had the opportunity to meet Dato Rais Hussin and he shared his 2019 book 4IR (AI, Blockchain, FinTech, IoT) Reinventing a Nation. The book is co-edited with Dinis Guarda and has a range of contributions from experts on topics from education to technical domains. After the launch of GPT in Nov 2022, AI […]

Tags: #4IR #Blockchain #FinTech #Malaysia #Rais Hussin

Uncategorized
Understanding Environmental Policy Processes

Understanding Environmental Policy Processes

Policy books on specific issues with specific cases tend to have a shorter shelf life of relevance. Keeley and Scoones wrote “Understanding Environmental Policy Processes: Cases from Africa” in 2003, and it largely falls in this category. The book has three cases as chapters (Ethiopia, Mali, Zimbabwe) and some general chapters on knowledge, power and […]

Tags: #Agricultural Policy #Environmental Policy #Ethiopia #Policy #Policy Networks

Uncategorized
Overcoming Smallness

Overcoming Smallness

What particular challenges do “small states” have and what options might they employ to overcome them? Building out of a collaborative teaching class, Miller and Al-Marri (2022) wrote “Overcoming Smallness”. The book offers a useful introduction to the literature on small states, with Chapter 1 on what small states are (and debates about that), Chapters 2 and 3 […]

Tags: #Fahad Al-Marri #Overcoming Smallness #Qatar #Rory Miller #Small states

Uncategorized
Teaching Interculturally in Qatar

Teaching Interculturally in Qatar

Qatar has unique traits that make some areas of inquiry particularly relevant. That the citizen population is a minority and that there are so many international K-12 schools as well as international university branch campuses, the country is very well suited to explore education, identity and language questions. Wisam Abdul-Jabbar edited a 2025 book delving […]

Tags: #Education #Inclusion #Interculturally #Interculture #Qatar

Uncategorized
Invention and Innovation

Invention and Innovation

Vaclav Smil, prolific author of several best selling book, published “Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure” (2023) with MIT Press. The book presents a three-part approach to assessing invention and innovation, which examines: (1) inventions that works but we later learned caused harm – leaded gasoline, DDT, CFCs; (2) Inventions we […]

Tags: #Failure #Innovation #Invention #Invention and Innovation #Vaclav Smil

Uncategorized
Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy

Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy

One of the key figures developing the Open Marxism school, Werner Bonefeld, wrote a sort of introductory level textbook “Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy – On Subversion and Negative Reason” (2014). The book generally builds on and critiques Marxist thought. It might be useful for an introduction, but a decade later this […]

Tags: #Critical Theory #Marxism #Marxist #Political Economy #Werner Bonefeld

Uncategorized