I want to say what a privilege it is to be invited to comment on Jeremiah Arowosegbe’s article ‘African universities and the challenge of postcolonial development’. First and foremost, this is because Arowosegbe’s piece is exactly the kind of intervention we need more of: passionately written, politically engaged commentaries on the state of African universities today by scholars based on the continent who are invested in charting the best way forward for their institutions. African universities have been in a kind of Janus-faced state for at least the last decade, if not longer. On the one hand, institutions with records of having been among the world’s most exciting universities of the 1960s and 1970s – Makerere, Ibadan, Dar es Salaam – have had to endure a near total, decades-long collapse driven by austerity programmes imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and forced on African states from the 1980s. This is a crisis that undoubtably lingers – indeed, Arowosegbe makes it his focus – and these universities have had to struggle not to be entirely defined by this story of lack and of failure. On the other hand, some of these institutions (including those named above) have come through the fire of this collapse and have emerged with new life that cannot be reduced to mere tendrils. On the contrary: the continent’s top dozen or so universities are today producing students who will very likely become the world’s next generation of humanists, social scientists and hard scientists focused on Africa, and beyond too. The pipeline for this present generation of students often now runs from undergraduate and master’s programmes in Africa, to top doctoral programmes in North America and Europe, to these students being the most competitive candidates for the mini-boom (relatively speaking) in tenure-track positions in disciplinary scholarship and pedagogy focused on Africa. Amidst a more general withering of the humanities in globally northern universities, African and Black Studies constitute a partial exception to the dying throes of higher education as we know it and are part of a laudable and long overdue diversification of the field. Adding to the reconfiguration of African Studies’ landscape of labour, the dramatic shortage of viable jobs in North America and the UK is making the job market for graduates of the world’s top PhD programmes a truly global one that includes Africa prominently. Not since the 1960s have we seen the prospect of top African universities being realistically able to attract new scholars trained in the global North to base themselves in Africa – a potential boon to African universities (even if one that remains more in potentia than realized).

Socialist states aspired to create modern, egalitarian societies with healthy citizens. Over the four decades of state socialism, experts debated whether premature children could achieve normal long-term mental development and full societal integration. This article analyses expertise networks to comparatively explore medical discussions regarding premature infants’ long-term development in Hungary, Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia. We examine how medical expertise interacted with psychology and sociology, analysing the shifting impact of these disciplines across time and space and how state–expertise relationships differed among disciplines. Two significant turning points emerge. First, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, psychology’s resurgence facilitated the identification of mental delays in preterm children, sparking systematic expert interest in their development. Second, beginning in the early 1970s, experts inspired by transnational knowledge exchange emphasized socio-environmental factors’ influence. While East-Central European experts referenced their Western counterparts, they diverged in framing gender and class dynamics. Socialist experts adopted a less gendered approach to parental roles, contrasting with Western studies emphasizing maternal care and paternal occupation. Although less classist than Western perspectives, 1970s medical expertise incorporated class indicators to analyse premature children’s socio-environments, aligning with country-specific sociological approaches. These developments indicate broader societal shifts within socialist societies.

To help academic and non-profit investigators interested in drug repurposing navigate regulatory approval processes, we compared pathways for repurposed drugs to obtain approval at EMA, UK MHRA, and the US FDA. Though we found no pathways specifically for repurposed drugs, pathways to market are available in all repurposing scenarios.

Welcome to Volume 25, No. 4 of Enterprise & Society. By tradition, this issue carries the presidential address delivered at the annual meeting of the Business History Conference. Sharon Murphy delivered a compelling talk on the topic “Doing Business in the Public Interest,” intermixing sharp reflections with personal family history. We are delighted to present Sharon’s fine essay here. Also, by tradition, this issue carries summaries of the dissertations shortlisted for the Krooss Prize at the annual meeting in the spring. This year four finalists presented their work to the conference. The four finalists were Manuel Bautista-González, Liane Hewitt, Jordan Howell, and Ellen Nye. This year’s winner of the Herman E. Krooss Prize for Best Dissertation in Business History was Ellen Nye. Unfortunately, personal circumstances have prevented Dr. Bautista-González from completing his summary in time for this issue, but we look forward to publishing his contribution as soon as possible.

Le livre de Maurizio Isabella, Southern Europe in the Age of Revolutions, démontre avec force qu’une partie de l’Europe, souvent perçue comme périphérique, a élaboré des pratiques révolutionnaires à la fois spécifiques et influentes au cours des premières décennies du xixe siècle. Ces pratiques et idéologies furent souvent partagées au-delà des frontières régionales. Cette contribution au forum des Annales, de la main d’un spécialiste de l’Europe centrale des Habsbourg, met en évidence trois éléments du livre particulièrement intéressants pour les historiens et historiennes du reste de l’Europe : M. Isabella tisse des liens de façon admirable entre différentes échelles d’analyse (le village, la région et l’État) ; il nous rappelle l’importance du concept de « fédéralisme » pour les libéraux européens ; enfin, son analyse a des conséquences plus larges pour l’étude des autres révolutions globales, notamment celle de 1848, dans la mesure où elle les soustrait à un point de vue franco-centré de la « propagation révolutionnaire ».