http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/32867 2026-05-21T13:24:55Z http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/33259 Title: Parliamentary briefing – Domestic work migration bans in Nepal Authors: Bhagat, A Abstract: This briefing examines Nepal's ban on domestic work migration, in place since 2017, and its impact on Nepali women who migrate through irregular channels. It summarises the evidence on why the ban increases rather than reduces vulnerability to exploitation, and makes five policy recommendations including lifting the ban immediately, extending consular protection regardless of migration status, and pursuing bilateral labour agreements as a parallel track rather than a precondition. 2026-05-05T00:00:00Z http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/33219 Title: Relationality, Affect and the Wound of Race: A Conversation on an Artistic Intervention into Global Colonial Whiteness Authors: Hunter, S; Halász, K Abstract: This article takes the form of a conversation concerning the latest iterations of our ongoing artistic interventions into Whiteness1 as global coloniality and bodily enacted discomfort. We created two interconnected video installations—You Are Invited (Halász and Hunter 2023) and Disobedient Bodies: Disobedience in Five Acts (Halász and Hunter 2025)—which we have presented over the past two years in various White institutional spaces across the USA, South Africa, Mexico, and South Korea2. This conversation captures our thinking as it has developed in the making of the artworks and in a constant exchange with participants in the installations. Engaging with extended reflections of one participant who experienced the video installation You are Invited in the USA, we consider why we are invested in confronting global colonial Whiteness as white makers and how we grapple through our own ongoing investments in Whiteness as we seek to challenge it through our artistic practice. As an entry point into our discussion, we consider our use of the African American writer James Baldwin’s 19533 essay “Stranger in the Village” in the artwork’s staging of a confrontation with the collective wound of race. We start here because critically analysing this use from the point of view of installation participants tells us something about the way Whiteness works through the tensions between representational and affective registers. If heeded, this tension can assist the move towards racialised accountability with care in artmaking. Where this tension is not heeded, it risks reproducing the same old White story. We present our conversation with the essay film Disobedient Bodies: Disobedience in Five Acts, which we encourage you to watch in full here [ https://www.katalinhalasz.com/s-projects-basic-1 ] before you read what follows in this paper. We also present screenshots of the video and photos of the installations in the text where they help guide the reader to a particular part of the film under discussion. We begin this piece with a short introduction overviewing the two video installations and the theoretical underpinnings. We then outline the conversational methodology we employ in this piece. We note how this conversational form relates to our theoretical approach along with the rationale for including a long excerpt from an interview with an installation participant as part of this conversation. The main body of the paper consists of the conversation about the making and experiencing of the installations. 2026-01-15T00:00:00Z http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/33158 Title: From liberation to occupation: rethinking Allied rule in Italy Authors: Erlichman, C; Simonetti, F Abstract: This introduction situates the Allied occupation of Italy as a distinctive yet comparatively underexplored case within the broader history of mid-twentieth-century military occupations. It traces the origins, peculiarities, and contradictions of Allied rule, foregrounding the tension between liberation and occupation that shaped both contemporary experiences and subsequent historiography. After outlining the fragmented development of the field and the long predominance of liberation-centred narratives, it calls for recontextualising the occupation of Italy within wider transnational and comparative frameworks. Rather than examining the Italian case solely through an exploration of its domestic impact, the article proposes treating it as an early laboratory for Allied ruling practices that were later applied elsewhere. In addition, it suggests exploring the Italian case through a set of research themes that have emerged from the new comparative field of Occupation Studies. The special issue advances this agenda by combining attention to hitherto marginalised aspects of the era with critical reflection on established subjects, thereby contributing to a reassessment of Italy’s place within the history of Allied rule in mid-twentieth-century Europe. Description: Italian summary: Questa introduzione si propone di trattare l’occupazione alleata dell’Italia come un caso distintivo ma relativamente poco esplorato nella storia più ampia delle occupazioni militari della metà del Novecento. Ne ricostruisce le origini, le peculiarità e le contraddizioni, mettendo in primo piano la tensione tra liberazione e occupazione che ha plasmato sia le esperienze contemporanee sia la successiva storiografia. Dopo aver delineato lo sviluppo frammentario della relativa storiografia e il lungo predominio di narrazioni incentrate sul concetto di liberazione, questo saggio invita a ricontestualizzare l’occupazione alleata dell’Italia all’interno di cornici transnazionali e comparative più ampie. Piuttosto che esaminare il caso italiano esclusivamente in termini di impatto nazionale, l’articolo propone di considerarlo un primo laboratorio di pratiche di governo alleate, successivamente applicate altrove. Inoltre, suggerisce di analizzare l’esperienza italiana attraverso una serie di temi di ricerca emersi nel nuovo settore degli Occupation Studies. Questo special issue porta avanti tale prospettiva combinando l’attenzione su aspetti finora marginalizzati con riflessioni su temi consolidati, contribuendo così a una rivalutazione del ruolo del caso italiano all’interno della più ampia storia delle pratiche di governo alleato nell’Europa della metà del Novecento. 2026-04-14T00:00:00Z http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/33144 Title: From strategic voters to strategic options: Recasting strategic voting for multiparty simple plurality elections Authors: Fieldhouse, E; Fisher, J Abstract: Research on strategic voting in simple plurality systems has focussed largely on voters faced with three options. This is problematic, first because strategically minded voters may prefer candidates outside of the three leading contenders; second, they may consider voting for third (or worse) placed parties; and third, some voters might have more than one strategic option. We demonstrate that conceptualising strategic voting in terms of strategic voters restricts our ability to accurately answer important questions about strategic voting. We set out a new approach to strategic voting which identifies the strategic options available to voters in multiparty contests. We then examine the number, distribution and character of strategic options and strategic votes in four British general elections using data from the British Election Study. We find that across these four elections 7% of options open to voters could be considered strategic and more than one third of these were voted for, accounting for 11% of all votes cast. Description: Supplemental material: Supplemental material for this article is available online. 2026-04-16T00:00:00Z