In Conversation: An OUP Podcast

What is kinship? This central question in cultural anthropology is standardly answered in terms of culturally constructed relationships that are unconstrained by biological relationships. In Kin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences (Oxford UP, 2026), Robert Wilson proposes an alternative view that does not separate kin relations from biological facts about reproduction that are universally known, such as the fact that human females are pregnant before they give birth. On the Progenerative View, kinship is the cultural elaboration of reproductive relations, which act as constraints on kin relations. Wilson, who is professor of philosophy at the University of Western Australia, also analyzes incest avoidance from this perspective, and draws on clinical findings, primatology, and philosophy of mind and philosophy of biology to develop his biologically-based yet non-reductive and culturally variable view of kinship.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, governments around the world have expelled, en masse, more than 30 million people. Yet despite its prevalence, mass expulsion remains an understudied phenomenon as scholarly attention has been directed toward the gravest atrocities—genocide and mass killing—or toward forced migration more broadly.

Mass Expulsion: The Politics of Forced Population Removal (Oxford UP, 2026) by Dr. Meghan Garrity examines why and how governments expel, providing a systematic, cross-regional account of mass expulsion over the longue durée. Using the original Government-Sponsored Mass Expulsion (GSME) dataset, the book explains when and where expulsion occurs, who is targeted, and what regimes are most likely to expel. The book identifies two overarching categories of mass expulsion—security and economic—and develops a typology of four corresponding types: counter-irredentist, counter-subversive, reprisal, and nativist. It advances a theory of mass expulsion that traces the decision-making process, showing how key structural, proximate, precipitating, and intervening factors combine to shape the conditions under which governments expel or are restrained. Evidence is drawn from archival research conducted at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the League of Nations archives in Geneva, Switzerland.This research contributes to the fields of international peace and security, political violence, and forced migration. Conceptually, it fills a gap in the literature by systematically examining mass expulsion as a distinct eliminationist policy aimed at the intentional removal of ethnic groups. Theoretically, it extends existing explanations beyond war and security threats, highlighting an entire class of expulsions targeting perceived economic threats. The book deepens our understanding of critical atrocity restraints, demonstrating the importance of alliances, the “homeland” state of the target group, and international organizations. These restraints generate core policy recommendations that seek to spur greater attention to deterring mass expulsion as a priority for atrocity prevention.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

In this interview, Shaun Gallagher discusses The Self and its Disorders (Oxford University Press, 2024)

A ground-breaking theory of the self as a pattern

Interdisciplinary, drawing on philosophy of mind, phenomenology, cognitive psychology, psychiatry, and dynamical systems analysis

Discusses the role of self-narrative in self-formation, its breakdown in various psychopathologies, and its role in therapy

Explores the phenomenology of agency and its disruption in various psychopathologies

Outlines a 4E (embodied, embedded, extended and enactive) approach to understanding the effects of different therapies for psychopathologies

Shaun Gallagher offers an account of psychopathologies as disorders of the self. The Self and its Disorders develops an interdisciplinary approach to an 'integrative' perspective in psychiatry. In contrast to some integrative approaches that focus on narrow brain-based conceptions, or on symptomology, this book takes its bearings from embodied and enactive conceptions of human experience. Gallagher offers an understanding of the self as a pattern of processes that include bodily, experiential, affective, cognitive, intersubjective, narrative, ecological and normative factors. He provides a philosophical analysis of the notion of self-pattern; then, drawing on phenomenological, developmental, clinical and experimental evidence, he proposes a method to study the effects of psychopathologies on the self-pattern. The book includes specific discussions of schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, depression, borderline personality disorder, and autism, among other disorders, as well as the effects of torture and solitary confinement. It also explores a variety of issues that relate to therapeutic approaches, including deep brain stimulation, meditation-based interventions, and the use of artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Prof Shaun Gallagher, Lillian and Morrie Moss Chair of Excellence in Philosophy, University of Memphis

Shaun Gallagher, PhD, Hon DPhil., is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence in Philosophy at the University of Memphis, and Professorial Fellow at the School of Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong. He was a Humboldt Foundation Anneliese Maier Research Fellow (2012-18) and has held Honorary Professorships at Tromsø University (Norway), Durham (UK), and Copenhagen (DK), as well as visiting positions at Cambridge, Lyon, Paris, Berlin, Oxford, and Rome. His areas of research include phenomenology, philosophy of mind, embodied cognition, social cognition, and concepts of self. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. Find Shaun here.

Dr. Anya Daly is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics in the School of Arts and Society, University of Tasmania. Interdisciplinary collaborations are at the core of Anya’s research interests. She investigates the intersections of phenomenology with philosophy of mind, the philosophy of perception, the philosophy of psychiatry, embodied and social cognition, enactivism, ethics, aesthetics and Buddhist Philosophy. Find Anya here

Original recording by Badger Made, Hobart. Contact: billygbadger@gmail.com

Baruch Fischhoff's Bounded Disciplines and Unbounded Problems: A Vision for Management Science (Oxford University Press, 2025), part of the Clarendon Lectures in Management series) tackles a central tension in academia that disciplines are organized around narrow, bounded methods and theories, while the real-world problems society faces such as climate change, public health, financial crises, technology risk are messy, unbounded, and refuse to respect departmental boundaries. Fischhoff argues that business schools are uniquely positioned to bridge this gap because they already house faculty with both rigorous analytical training and applied, real-world orientation. The book proposes concrete ways management schools can restructure incentives, training, and collaboration so scholars can excel in their discipline while still meaningfully engaging with intractable societal problems.

Literature and Learning: A History of English Studies in Britain (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Stefan Collini

The
study and teaching of English literature is generally regarded as one
of the central disciplines in the modern university, yet for much of its
history it struggled to gain academic legitimacy and was frequently
derided as 'a soft option'. Its early professors responded by
emphasizing its scholarly character, foregrounding philology and
literary history in ways that marked the syllabus far into the twentieth
century.

Stefan Collini provides here the first full account of the
discipline's development from its late-eighteenth-century beginnings up
to the early 1960s. Paying special attention to institutional settings,
he challenges numerous assumptions about the character of universities
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the detailed
exploration of syllabuses, exam papers, and other institutional records,
the impact of literary criticism is revealed to be later and more
partial than is commonly assumed. Rather than seeing the early teaching
of English literature as 'a substitute for religion' or 'a means to
soften class conflict', Collini emphasizes the role of ideals of
learnedness and scholarship, as well as of external factors such as
opportunities for employment in the civil service and secondary
school-teaching. There are full discussions of the parts played by such
figures as John Churton Collins, A.C. Bradley, George Saintsbury, and
Walter Raleigh, together with sceptical analyses of the decisive
significance usually attributed to Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, I.A.
Richards, and F.R. Leavis. Separate chapters are devoted to neglected
aspects of the story such as the role of Classics, the importance of the
subject for women's higher education, and the connections with English
teaching in schools.

Drawing on extensive use of institutional
archives and records as well as the writings of contemporary
participants, the book offers a vivid and wide-ranging history of
English-as-discipline and its centrality across academic, literary,
cultural, and educational life over the past two year hundred years, as
well as a resounding testament to its continued importance and relevance
today.

Stefan Collini, Professor Emeritus of Intellectual
History and English Literature, University of Cambridge. Stefan Collini
was educated at Cambridge and Yale. Following a Research Fellowship at
St John's College, Cambridge, he was Lecturer, then Reader, in
Intellectual History at the University of Sussex 1974-86; Lecturer, then
Reader, then Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature
at the University of Cambridge 1986-2014. He is a Fellow of the British
Academy, and a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and Guardian.

Morteza Hajizadeh
is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New
Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory;
Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies;
18th
and 19th Century British Literature.