The Anti-Atlas: New publication by Dr Murawski, Prof Bracewell and Dr Beasley-Murray

Dr Michal Murawski (UCL SSEES), Prof Wendy Bracewell (UCL SSEES) and Dr Tim Beasley-Murray (UCL BASc) have edited the latest book in the FRINGE series; Anti-Atlas: Critical Area Studies from the East of the West (UCL Press, Feb 2025)

The invasion of Ukraine is the latest in a series of upheavals that have made eastern Europe a telling point from which to consider the place of area studies in the construction of knowledge about the world. The politics of academic knowledge about ‘areas’ now feels more urgent than ever.

Anti-Atlas plays with the politics of the conventional atlas, with its assumptions about knowledge and power, its hierarchies of value, and its simplifications. It presents a collection of essays written by an eclectic mix of authors from Europe, both east and west, the UK and North America. 

Dr Murawski comments 'What transpired is an eclectic, programmatically "undisciplined" collection of over 40 contributions imagining the world as seen from some kind of "east" (whatever that means). An imperfect but very honest, and, I think, significant collective contribution to how we might conceive of area studies as a substantively "critical" project. The book reflects many different understandings of critique and positionality, conceived and penned at different points in time. The final drafts of most of the essays were completed in 2021; the long introductory essay reflects, among other things, on the epistemological violences and conjuctures that we only became wise to following russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 (and on what we might have done differently had we become wiser sooner)."

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