On October 5, 2023, Ubisoft Entertainment SA (Ubisoft) released Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the thirteenth installment in its video-game series launched in 2007. Since its inception, the Assassin’s Creed franchise has engaged hundreds of millions of players around the world; the most recent estimates indicate that Mirage players number in the millions.1 Set in 9th-century Baghdad, the game centers on Basim Ibn Ishaq, a character introduced in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (2020). The authors of this article served as consultants and collaborators for the game, under the auspices of the Digital Lab for Islamic Culture and Collections (DLIVCC), based at the University of Edinburgh. As such, we were among the external historians and institutions who helped create and contribute to the game’s educational feature.2 This article offers reflections on our collective experiences working on Assassin’s Creed Mirage, reviews historical representation of Islamicate cultures in video games, discusses the remit of the DLIVCC consultancy, and identifies some structural challenges to diversifying and decolonizing video games and game-development processes.3 Lastly, we propose steps for scholars and institutions wishing to broaden the impact of their research through decolonization work across the academic, video games, and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) sectors.

During the Second World War, Germans, Austrians and Italians living in Great Britain were designated as ‘enemy aliens’ and consequently interned. The worsening situation on the continent in May and June 1940 stirred up hysteria that spies and saboteurs could be amongst the Germans and Austrians. Mass arrests started in May 1940, and Italians were soon caught up in the detentions when Mussolini declared war on 10 June, thus filling internment camps to capacity. Canada and Australia agreed to take some of the ‘most dangerous characters’, facilitating the most controversial aspect of internment – deportation – which led to the ultimate tragedy when the SS Arandora Star was torpedoed and sunk on 2 July 1940. Building on previous scholarship that focuses on either German or Italian internment, this article examines both government policy towards and the internee experience of these two groups on an equal footing, thus furthering integration of the Italian narrative within internment historiography.

This article examines the Wadi Salib protest that erupted in Haifa in the summer of 1959 against the background of the history of the children in the neighborhood during the 1950s. One of the main causes of the protest, which was led by Jewish migrants from Morocco, was the educational and social condition of the children in Wadi Salib. During the Mandate period, Wadi Salib and the surrounding areas had already emerged as a focus of poverty and deprivation. Among other aspects, the article examines the changes that occurred in the character of the neighborhood after 1948 and the essence of Wadi Salib, with its street steps, as a liminal space between downtown Haifa and the Hadar HaCarmel neighborhood. The liminal character of Wadi Salib was manifested in its status as an impoverished migrant area, in the participation of children in the protest of the summer of 1959, and in the educational, social, and health problems that faced the children. This character was also manifested in the manner in which the children of Wadi Salib challenged the physical and symbolic boundaries that enclosed the neighborhood.

This study presents new (n=32) and previously published (n=35) human bone 14C AMS dates from 54 individuals interred in 50 burials in the Plinkaigalis cemetery (3rd–7th century AD, Lithuania). The aim of this study is to establish duration of use and identify temporal subgroups within the cemetery. Individuals in group burials were assessed for temporal agreement across individuals and the dates for individuals with multiple dates were combined using OxCal. The Sum command, Interval command, and two Bayesian models (overlapping and abutting periods of use) were used to approximate the use of the site over time and evaluate the chronology of dated burials. An IDW (inverse distance weighted) model was employed to visualize median radiocarbon dates across the cemetery for comparison to earlier IDW interpolations of time at Plinkaigalis. While the two models cannot be distinguished at this time, it can be determined that the site was likely in continuous use from 200–600 cal AD (Sum), 230–560 cal AD (Model 1), 220–550 cal AD (Model 2), or cal 283–508 AD (IDW). The area of the cemetery associated with earliest use shifted east when the IDW model was compared to original data. There was also poor agreement in some group burials and burials with multiple dates. The models generally agree on assignment of burials to phases, but disparate phase assignment was noted across the IDW and Bayesian models. Temporal subgroups cannot be confidently reclassified beyond early/later periods of use based on these models without additional sampling and refinement of the IDW modeling method.

In 2021, the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage (NRICH) installed a new accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) to date Korean national heritage. Before conducting radiocarbon dating, the facility was set up and its performance was assessed. AMS system parameters have been optimized. Measurement of standard and blank samples was verified. Intercomparison analyses were also performed using heritage samples. The F14C value of NIST 4990C was 1.3406 and the background level was 0.0024. Both IAEA-C7 and C8 were confirmed to match the reference value within the 1-σ range. The NIST 4990C measurement results confirmed high precision and accuracy, with 1-σ values below 2‰. In the intercomparison, the error for each sample was 2‰. Thus, based on this study, NRICH plans to launch a dating service specializing in cultural heritage.

Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History are notorious for their racist portrayal of Africa. Few scholars, however, have considered their racism to be significant for Hegel's practical philosophy. This is largely because colonialism and Black enslavement appear to conflict with the idea of universal freedom at the heart of Hegel's practical philosophy. In my paper, I argue against this view and defend the claim that Hegel's idea of freedom is linked to white identity. It therefore grounds his racist comments in the Philosophy of History rather than opposing them. In order to show that Hegel's idea of freedom is linked to white identity, I trace its connections with the Western idea of property. My suggestion is that Hegel conceptualizes freedom as appropriation, thereby linking freedom to property and white identity. I conclude that Hegel's idea of freedom is an idea of white freedom and thus not an ‘impartial criterion’ for social critique.

Learning about music, sound or audio can present significant challenges for individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH). Given the advancements in technology and the increasing emphasis on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in education, this article proposes pedagogical approaches aimed at facilitating the learning process for DHH students in the areas of music and audio production. These approaches encompass sound visualisation, haptic feedback, automated transcription, tactics in non-linear editing and digital signal processing. Importantly, these approaches do not necessitate advanced technical skills or substantial additional resources, thus lowering barriers for DHH students to overcome challenges in music and audio production. Furthermore, these strategies would enable content creation and editing for individuals with DHH, who may have previously been excluded from participating in music and audio production. Recommendations are provided for the implementation of these approaches in diverse educational settings to promote the integration of EDI in music and audio education.

The question of deradicalization looms large in the historiography of western European socialism. But in this contested field, the contributions of the New Left historian, Ralph Miliband, have been curiously neglected. Through his work on the British Labour Party, Miliband developed a distinctive account of deradicalization that foregrounds the fact that when parties enter government, party elites find themselves transplanted into new, alien institutions. Over time, he argued, they then come to internalize the worldviews of those institutions and reshape their parties accordingly. This essay presents the first quantitative and cross-national test of this “experience of governing hypothesis,” using Comparative Manifesto Project data from western European socialist parties between 1945 and 2021 and a novel matching technique for panel data. Miliband’s theory is strongly supported by this analysis, which also demonstrates the value of taking a multi-dimensional approach to deradicalization.

We prove a version of the Lefschetz hyperplane theorem for fppf cohomology with coefficients in any finite commutative group scheme over the ground field. As consequences, we establish new Lefschetz results for the Picard scheme.