The Encyclopaedia of Late Antique Art and Archaeology seeks to fill a significant gap in historical research by placing art and archaeology at the forefront of late Roman and late antique studies. Recognising the need for a comprehensive and accessible reference, this work moves beyond the traditional focus on ‘early Christian archaeology’ to adopt a broader perspective. It highlights the dynamic interplay of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, challenging outdated notions of a fully Christianised Late Antiquity. Organised into six sections – architecture and iconography, artefacts and material evidence, urbanism and rural landscapes, regional and ethnic diversity, and key issues and debates – the encyclopaedia offers a structured, in-depth exploration of the field. With contributions from leading scholars, it synthesises archaeological discoveries to challenge narratives of decline, instead presenting Late Antiquity as an era of transformation and cultural fusion.

The aim of this chapter is to apply the book’s general organizing principle and method to some of the most significant developments in the English-speaking Protestant world in the last four centuries, including the transition from pietism to evangelicalism, the explosive growth of Protestant missions, the origins of premillennial dispensationalism and its contribution to the rise of American fundamentalism, and finally the worldwide spread of Pentecostalism. None of these developments in the creation of a “Protestant International” can be studied within a single denominational or national tradition, and none can be understood without coming to terms with its nucleus of ideas/theologies, the nodal points of transmission and dissemination, and the transnational networks that facilitated growth.

This chapter explores late antique wall painting, with special emphasis on its stylistic transformation, evolving iconography and the challenges of preservation and interpretation. It traces the shift from illusionistic Roman painting to the more abstract, linear styles that characterised Late Antiquity. A central argument is that late antique wall painting represents not a decline in artistic quality but rather an adaptive response to new cultural, religious and spatial demands. The chapter examines the rise of Liniendekoration (linear decoration), a geometric style that became dominant in funerary contexts, particularly in Roman catacombs, Egyptian monasteries and Mediterranean hypogea. It also explores the coexistence of early Christian imagery with traditional pagan motifs, emphasising continuity rather than abrupt change. In analysing these shifts, the chapter highlights how late antique painters simplified classical techniques in response to changing workshop practices, economic factors and environmental constraints. It also addresses key methodological challenges, including dating wall paintings, identifying regional styles and assessing the influence of early Christian and Jewish artistic traditions. This study stresses the crucial role of wall painting in Late Antiquity as a medium for shaping religious and social identities, demonstrating its artistic innovation and cultural significance.

Chapter 4 explores the intricacies of the legal principle of standing, its role in climate litigation, and how it impacts the ability of parties to bring climate change-related lawsuits to trial. The author discusses interpretations of standing across different jurisdictions, such as the United States, New Zealand, and countries in Europe, and explains how these interpretations can either impede or facilitate climate litigation. He distils emerging best practice from this analysis, providing an insightful guide for future climate lawsuits. The author then identifies emerging best practice in interpreting standing rules in a flexible manner, thus allowing a broader range of actors to bring climate-related lawsuits and enhancing access to justice.

I present a theoretical framework underscoring the way the emergence of a dominant party leader shapes strategic interactions among party elites, which in turn lead to distinct party-building strategies and capacities for resource mobilization. The key insights of the theoretical framework are threefold. First, party ideology serves as a constraining device influencing the types of party mobilization infrastructure – elite-centric vis-à-vis mass-centric – that embody distinct comparative advantages. Second, domination by a party leader mitigates the collective action problem faced by party elites, leading to coherent party-building strategies that serve as the foundation for effective resource mobilization. In contrast, when party elites engage in contentious power struggles, the quality of mobilization infrastructure suffers because of conflicting party-building strategies. Finally, I integrate the concept of contingencies into the theoretical framework, positing that the balance of intraparty elite power and the state of mobilization infrastructure act as mediators through which these events influence party strength.

Conservatives make five claims about why taxes in America should be cut, especially for corporations and the rich. They claim that taxes are too high, hurt the economy, encourage government waste, are unfair, and threaten Americans’ freedom. Their arguments are based on a set of economic ideas called neoliberalism that are much more a matter of fiction than fact. Yet these ideas have become taken-for-granted truths – myths – among conservatives. This chapter reviews the rise of neoliberalism, how it provided conservatives the intellectual foundation for their mythical claims about the benefits of tax cuts, how these myths affected tax policy in the United States, and how politicians have used these myths to justify cutting taxes. Popular as these ideas may have been among conservatives, they are often not supported by cross-national, historical, or public opinion poll data.

Winifred Cooper’s birth as a middle-class expatriate followed parental decisions to embark on challenging mobile employment and adventure. However, the chapter shows how expatriate opportunities worked for young girls in unique, gendered ways. The expatriate social mobility argument here takes a more complex turn, charting a growing girl’s ability to exploit frequent travel and greater freedoms of privileged life abroad. Her education and social life shifted frequently between sites in Georgia, London and Tehran, and later Ahwaz, fostering a degree of maturity and linguistic ability. Her engagement with local politics and multicultural friends in Georgia, her work as a telegraphist, her popularity as a multilingual and fashionable ‘young lady’ at the Persian court and among Tehran expatriates, and management of successive hopeful suitors, underline the potential of expatriation to enable women’s independence and cosmopolitanism. Told mostly through a diary and letters, it ends with a compelling account of Winifred and Edgar’s early love story and a fashionable expatriate wedding in Tehran. It moves from two unknown English men, prospering in overseas service, to a complex dynamic of how expatriate identity could be exploited by the next generation and contribute to an unconventional, cosmopolitan marriage.