📚 FRIAS Alumnus Collins C. Ajibo (University of Nigeria) and Yenkong Ngangjoh Hodu (University of Manchester) published a critical analysis of regional trade agreements (RTAs) in the Global South with Cambridge University Press.

The book, titled “Regional Trade Agreements, Prosperity and the Global South”, examines four regional trade agreements (RTAs) – the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) and the United States-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement (USMCA), while exploring the gap between ambition and implementation in regional economic integration.

🔗 Book details (Cambridge University Press): https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/regional-trade-agreements-prosperity-and-the-global-south/E17F4EA378272B3ED0FBB9992C829BF9

🔗 Collins C. Ajibo (FRIAS Fellow Profile): https://uni-freiburg.de/frias/prof-dr-chikodili-collins-ajibo/

#FRIASBookHighlights #CollinsAjibo #TradeLaw #AfCFTA #RegionalIntegration #InternationalLaw #CambridgeUniversityPress #Research #AcademicPublishing

✍️📚 #FRIASBookHighlights Part VI
📢 🗯️ Gefährdet #Identitätspolitik Freiheit und Demokratie? Diese in immer neuen Varianten wiederholte Kernbotschaft in politischen Debatten richtet sich gegen einen Politikstil, der sich gegen Diskriminierung wendet, aber angeblich in der Sackgasse des Stammesdenkens landet. Mit sachlicher Gelassenheit und ohne jede Polemik setzt sich @ka_schubert mit den wichtigsten Einwänden auseinander und entwickelt einen neuen Blick auf den politischen Kampf um Identitäten.

👨‍🏫 Karsten Schubert war 2022/23 FRIAS Junior Fellow. Im Mai 2025 präsentierte er sein Buch im Rahmen der FRIAS Freiburger Horizonte. Zur Aufzeichnung: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HiIoKkYl28

👥 Am FRIAS profitieren unsere Fellows von der #Freiheit, sich ganz ihrer #Forschung zu widmen. Das fokussierte und unterstützende Umfeld ermöglicht es ihnen, in Ruhe zu schreiben, zu denken und kreativ zu arbeiten. Viele Fellows veröffentlichen die Ergebnisse ihrer Arbeit in führenden internationalen Fachzeitschriften und bei renommierten Verlagen.

📚 In dieser Serie präsentieren wir eine kuratierte Auswahl an Buch-Highlights aus dem akademischen Jahr 2024/25. #friasbookhighlights

✍️📚 #FRIASBookHighlights Part V
📖 🔍 Elmira Akhmetova examines issues related to #Muslim women's engagement in science and scholarship, both past and present. In the first two parts, she discusses the contributions made by Muslim #women to scholarly, scientific, and technological advancements. In the third part, she addresses the factors that contributed to a decline in Muslim women's scholarly involvement in Islamic civilisation, the veracity of historical accounts, and the constraints in original knowledge production in contemporary Muslim societies. She shows that there are no religious restrictions rooted in the Qur'an that forbid women from pursuing a profession in #science, whether as learners or practitioners. However, she also highlights how different circumstances and outdated interpretations of Islam produce discrimination against women in Muslim societies and lead to their underrepresentation in scientific research and academia.

👥 Elmira Akhmetova was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at FRIAS from 2021 to 2023.
At FRIAS, our fellows benefit from the #freedom to fully dedicate themselves to their #research. The focused and supportive environment allows them to write, think, and create in depth. Many fellows publish the results of their work in leading international journals and with renowned publishers.

📚 In this series, we present a curated selection of book highlights from the academic year 2024/25 – works that took shape at FRIAS. #friasbookhighlights

✍️📚 #FRIASBookHighlights Part IV
📜⌛ In “Ethics and Analogy (Qiyās) in 5th/11th-Century Islamic Legal Theory,” Felicitas Opwis presents how ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī, al-Dabbūsī, al-Shīrāzī, and al-Juwaynī relate the ethical status of acts to their legal norm, and whether they apply the ethical content of divine rulings in the procedure of analogy when extending laws to new circumstances. The study draws attention to the theological worldview as an explanatory factor of norm construction and a jurist’s approach to identifying the ratio legis of divine rulings. The book traces the shift, fully articulated later by al-Ghazālī, toward understanding the purpose of the divine law as attaining people’s maṣlaḥa in this life, which enables extending the law outside of Scripture and supports Ashʿarī legal universalism.

👥 Felicitas Opwis has been a FRIAS Senior Fellow in the Freiburg Research Collaboration Programme since 2021.
At FRIAS, our fellows benefit from the #freedom to fully dedicate themselves to their #research. The focused and supportive environment allows them to write, think, and create in depth. Many fellows publish the results of their work in leading international journals and with renowned publishers.

📚 In this series, we present a curated selection of book highlights from the academic year 2024/25 – works that took shape at FRIAS. #FRIASBookHighlights

✍️📚 #FRIASBookHighlights Part III
Despite three decades of rapid expansion and public success, global history’s theoretical and methodological foundations remain under-conceptualised. In this collection of essays, leading historians provide a reassessment of global history’s most common analytical instruments, metaphors and conceptual foundations. “Rethinking Global History” reflects on the structure and direction of #history, its relation to our present and the ways in which historians should best explain, contextualise and represent events and circumstances of the past. In chapters on fundamental concepts such as scale, comparison, temporality and teleology, this collection will guide readers to assess the extant literature critically and write theoretically informed global histories. Taken together, these essays provide a unique and much-needed assessment of the implications of history going #global. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

🏆 Jürgen Osterhammel has been a FRIAS Distinguished Fellow since 2019.

👥 At FRIAS, our fellows benefit from the #freedom to fully dedicate themselves to their #research. The focused and supportive environment allows them to write, think, and create in depth. Many fellows publish the results of their work in leading international journals and with renowned publishers.

📚 In this series, we present a curated selection of book highlights from the academic year 2024/25 – works that took shape at FRIAS.

✍️📚 #FRIASBookHighlights Part II
🌍 🌳 Unsere Welt steht an einem Wendepunkt. Die Plastikfluten verschmutzen unsere Ozeane, die #Klimakrise bedroht unser Leben, und das Artensterben reißt tiefe Lücken in unsere Natur. In der Graphic Novel “Welt im Wandel” begleiten wir fünf Jugendliche aus verschiedenen Teilen der Welt, die sich den großen Herausforderungen unserer Zeit stellen. In kraftvollen Bildern und bewegenden Geschichten werden die historischen Wurzeln der globalen Probleme beleuchtet. Die Jugendlichen zeigen mögliche Wege, wie wir gemeinsam eine bessere, nachhaltigere Welt schaffen können.
Die Graphic Novel ist ein kollaboratives Projekt von Mitgliedern der am FRIAS angesiedelten Young Academy for #Sustainability Research (YAS).

👥 Am FRIAS profitieren unsere Fellows von der Freiheit, sich ganz ihrer #Forschung zu widmen. Das fokussierte und unterstützende Umfeld ermöglicht es ihnen, in Ruhe zu schreiben, zu denken und kreativ zu arbeiten. Viele Fellows veröffentlichen die Ergebnisse ihrer Arbeit in führenden internationalen Fachzeitschriften und bei renommierten Verlagen.

📚 In dieser Serie präsentieren wir eine kuratierte Auswahl an Buch-Highlights aus dem akademischen Jahr 2024/25. #friasbookhighlights

✍️📚 #FRIASBookHighlights Part I
📖🔍 “To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause” is a compelling account of the Soviet dissident movement that defied the Kremlin and hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union. Benjamin Nathans chronicles the dramatic stories of individuals—from renowned figures like Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn to lesser-known activists—who used Soviet law to challenge state power. Drawing on personal diaries, memoirs, letters and KGB records, Nathans reveals how these dissidents, acting like free people in an unfree society, became symbols of #resistance. This vivid narrative not only illuminates their impact on the 20th century but also resonates with ongoing struggles for #freedom today.

🏆 Benjamin Nathans was FRIAS Marie S. Curie FCFP Fellow 2022/23. His book was awarded the #PulitzerPrize in 2025.

👥 At FRIAS, our fellows benefit from the freedom to fully dedicate themselves to their #research The focused and supportive environment allows them to write, think, and create in depth. Many fellows publish the results of their work in leading international journals and with renowned publishers.

📚 In this series, we present a curated selection of book highlights from the academic year 2024/25 – works that took shape at FRIAS. #friasbookhighlights