Books published by Manchester University Press

This book mobilises an abolitionist approach to contemporary borders, combining critical migration scholarship and carceral abolitionism literature. It argues that a critique of borders involves rethinking the right to mobility as part of processes of commoning.

Through accounts of ethnographers' various exits from the field, this book draws attention to an overlooked but essential part of the research process, and contributes to more general discussions of ethnography.

This book describes how Italy elaborated a master narrative of the Second World War that evades the faults of Mussolini's fascist war by attributing all responsibility on the shoulders of the German ally

This book examines John Donne's theory of royal absolutism within a tradition of conformist thought.It argues that Donne displaced the conventional opposition between Catholics and Protestants and instead divided English subjects into two political categories: those who obey the law and those who break it.

This book reveals the eighteenth-century home as a site of emergence for science. By rejecting the limiting associations of 'domestic life', this book re-imagines a culture of enquiry populated by apprentices and housewives as much as Fellows of the Royal Society.

Bede the Scholar distils a decade of research by leading scholars on the Northumbrian monk, the Venerable Bede (c. 673-735). Considering his place within the wider intellectual developments of the early medieval world, the book demonstrates the centrality of the Bible to Bede's writings and the coherence and clarity of his scholarly programme.

This is the first comprehensive account of the policies of the Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region combined authorities during the first terms of Mayors Burnham and Rotheram, from 2017-21.

From government ministers and spies to activists, drag queens and celebrities, Odd men out charts the tumultuous history of gay men in 1950s and 60s Britain. It takes us from the earliest tentative steps towards decriminalisation to the liberation movement of the early 1970s. Along the way, it catalogues shocking repression, including laws against homosexual activity and the use of brutal medical 'treatments'. Odd men out draws on medical data and opinion polls, broadcast recordings, theatrical productions, and extensive interviews with key players, as well as an in-depth analysis of the Wolfenden Report and the circumstances surrounding its creation. It brings to life pivotal moments in gay mens' cultural representation, ranging across the West End and emerging writers like Joe Orton, the British film industry, the BBC, national newspapers, fashion catalogues and music magazines. Celebrating the joy of gay lives as well as the hardships, Odd men out preserves the voices of a disappearing generation who revolutionised what it meant to be a gay man in twentieth-century Britain.

Ideal homes investigates the tastes and aspirations of the suburban communities that emerged in Britain after the First World War. It explores how new class and gender identities were forged through the architecture and decoration of the home. This edition includes a chapter on researching the history of your own house. -- .

Examines how commercial medicine operated before the foundation of the NHS, and how this could be compatible with a system based on charity. It challenges the assumptions of historians, politicians and the public. -- .

This book explores how and why citizens come to terms with living in illiberal regimes and offers a new, liberal realist approach to political ethics.

This is the first comprehensive analysis of the Middle East political economy in response to the oil price decline in 2014. Based on a heuristic framework inspired by rentierism, the volume contains original studies on Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

This book utilises theoretical models to analyse the defence conditions and preparedness of Eastern Europe. It considers the transition from Cold War to post-Cold War democracies, the stability of the East-Central European States, the precarious defence positions of the Baltic states and the uneven defence preparedness of the Balkan states.

This collection brings together scholars from disciplines including Children's Literature, Classics, and History to develop fresh approaches to children's culture and the uses of the past. It charts the significance of historical episodes and characters during the long nineteenth-century (1750-1914), a critical period in children's culture. Boys and girls across social classes often experienced different pasts simultaneously, for purposes of amusement and instruction. The book highlights an active and shifting market in history for children, and reveals how children were actively involved in consuming and repackaging the past: from playing with historically themed toys and games to performing in plays and pageants. Each chapter reconstructs encounters across different media, uncovering the cultural work done by particular pasts and exposing the key role of playfulness in the British historical imagination.

Through innovative readings of seven novels, Creating character demonstrates how the Victorian sensation authors Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins employed, challenged and explored diverse, and sometimes contradictory, theories of character formation in their fiction -- .

This volume is the first to study the phenomenon of early medieval militarisation from a wide geographic and disciplinary perspective. It explores the impact of an enhanced role attributed to warfare and the military as characteristic features of a European world in the process of becoming medieval.

This monograph takes a unique archaeological approach to the investigation of innovation and the innovation process. Case studies span the breadth of human history, from our earliest hominin ancestors to the contemporary world. The emphasis is on the social context and temporality of invention, adoption, creativity and resistance. -- .