Over the past couple weeks the direction of my project has taken a pretty significant shift in a new direction. As I began to narrow my geographical scope, I found that there is a lot of historical richness to be
The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of the Olympics
In Syracuse, the tyrant Hieron bribed Astylos, a successful Olympic athlete, to compete in the 480 and 484 BC Olympic Games under the national banner of Syracuse. Astylos accepted this offer and the bribe. In Croton (where Astylos was from),
Looking To The West for Reform: China v. Japan
In recent weeks, I’ve been doing some research into China’s 1911 revolution, led by Sun-Yat Sen. The revolution started in Wuhan in the Hubei Province with an army mutiny and a battle between rebels and Qing loyalists. The Qing dynasty,
Singapore vs Hong Kong
For Asians (and expats in Asia), this has caused decades of arguments as to which is a better place to live, to work, and to play. Apart from the obvious – that Hong Kong is clearly better – a transnational
Sergey Prokudin Gorsky and his transnational photographs
View of Suzdal’ from the Kamenka River, 1912 For once I am not sitting down to write about the Spanish flu. This week, while working on another essay (this one on Russia) I started thinking about one of my favorite
Disney: A Transnational Company
Since I’ve been lacking in motivation as to what to write for my blog post, and did not want to delve into yet another piece on my long project, I decided to think about the transnationalism of a topic that’s
Final Year Project: Congress for Cultural Freedom
Given that most of you have already written blog posts on your end of year projects already, I thought I would share a little bit about how mine is progressing so far. For those of you who do not know
A different kind of network
I have been merrily researching the Spanish flu for several weeks now. My flatmates have been regaled with interesting facts about cytokines and death tolls. While discussing politics with my visiting family over spring break, I informed everyone at the
The Historian and the ANT: a cautionary tale
‘The move of African workers from a British colony to a German colony,’ Ulrike Lindner argues, ‘entailed a clash of different colonial cultures, which can thus be analysed in a new light.’[1] This is not an unusual statement. It is
Weak Links, Strong Ties and Transnational Actors
This week’s reading has opened up a number of questions regarding the way in which knowledge is transferred, and the actors and networks that are established to communicate this information. Lux has highlighted the importance of ‘weak links’ and
So far so bad
After having just completed another article relating to the development of scientific communication networks, I feel like I have expanded my understanding of the inherent communicative powers of information/knowledge. Unfortunately, I am still faced with the unwavering issue of how
Having just written my short essay on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and given that in our next class we will be discussing actors and networks, I thought it would be useful for us all if I wrote guide on some
Some Thoughts on National Culture
Wow I haven’t written in a while now. It’s been a hectic few weeks with the end to this half of the semester, but I wanted to get a post in before Spring Break just to keep things ticking over.
My (Very) Unsuccessful Attempt at QGIS
Class on Tuesday reminded me that I had a blogpost to write for this week, but inspiration did not hit till Wednesday. I have to admit, working on QGIS yesterday proved more challenging than I thought it would be, coming
Weak = Strong & Strong = Weak
It should be noted that this blog post will not discuss the meaning of this title statement (or distinction); but rather its usages ….for me lol. When I first approached the topic of control over information networks, I encountered a