Independent Social Research Foundation

25/08/2026

Ukraine's attacks on the Russian e-commerce platform, Wildberries, has far reaching implications for traders across Central Asia. Claudia Eggart explains how small and medium sized business owners in Kyrgyzstan's are grappling with the trade disruptions.

Ukraine’s campaign to target Russia’s e-commerce giant Wildberries has had impacts far beyond the Russian federation. For Russia, Wildberries is comparable to Amazon, accounting for about 50% of the country’s online retail market. But its market place is used by manufacturers as far afield as ...

20/08/2026

The story of the Teesside Freeport is not simply one of economic regeneration and deregulation. It also illustrates how such zones reshape norms around accountability, transparency and development. Our latest ISRF Report from Dr Alexandra Hall examines the complexities of freeports - from legal governance to their impact on local communities, livelihoods and environments.

This page gathers all of the ISRF's official academic publications. This includes the Foundation's in-house periodical, the ISRF Bulletin, as well as individual reports and publications.

18/08/2026

What does it mean to work in the UK's higher education system today? For many academics, it involves confronting increasingly narrow career pathways, from teaching only contracts to conducting 'strategic' research. In this contribution to our Dispatches series, Eva Nanopoulos interrogates how the university's two-tier system divides staff, reinforces precarity and extracts more labour from academics.

‘But some people want, or are naturally more suited for, teaching’. I remember that sentence well. It was right before the pandemic. This was not exactly common knowledge, but my department was trying to move some people currently on research and teaching (T&R) contracts to teaching-only contra...

13/08/2026

This week on Material Crimes, Robyn Gill-Leslie examines the cover-up of anti-apartheid activist Imam Abdullah Haron in 1969. Her investigation uncovers the infrastructures of the apartheid that enabled systems of torture and abuse while protecting those who inflicting it from justice

Material Crimes · Episode

12/08/2026

Join us at MayDay Rooms on 17th September for the launch of Jill Gibbon's 'Gifts from the Arms Trade'. With Simon Morris & Anna Stavrianakis, we will discuss the massive arms fairs which combine lethal weapons with cute promotional gifts.

https://isrf.org/events/gifts-from-the-arms-trade

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How did continuous warfare become normal in the 21st century? How did police in many countries start using military hardware to manage ordinary crowds?

Jill Gibbon’s new book "Gifts from the Arms Trade" reveals part of the answer to these questions: massive arms fairs, the trade shows for military equipment, which combine displays of the world’s most lethal tanks, missiles, and fighter jets with cute promotional gifts. She reports on the combination of drones hanging from ceiling and pe*******on bombs on the floor, all wrapped in a fun atmosphere of corporate hospitality sealed with chewable candy.

Jill Gibbon - Emeritus Reader at the Leeds School of Arts, Leeds Beckett University and an ISRF Early Career Fellow 2017-18 for the project The Etiquette of the Arms Trade - is a 'war artist' known for her ethnographies of the corporate side of the global weapons trade. Here she uses promotional gifts she has collected from the fairs, photographed by Ricky Adam, to give an insight into this lethal industry that continues to reshape the world. She and a panel of commentators will discuss her extensive collection of images of arm fair gifts, and will put them in the context of the practice of war and arms dealing today.

Jill will be joined by Simon Morris, Emeritus Professor in the Leeds School of Arts at Leeds Beckett University, artist, and co-editor of "Inscription"; and Anna Stavrianakis, Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex and author of "Taking Aim at the Arms Trade. NGOs, Global Civil Society and the World Military Order" (Zed Books, 2010).

A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.

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https://isrf.org/events/gifts-from-the-arms-trade

11/08/2026

🚨 Latest blog!

At a moment when freeports are positioned at the centre of post-Brexit industrial strategy and regional regeneration, this report, by Dr Alexandra Hall , examines the realities beneath the language of “levelling up”, competitiveness and renewal

In May 2023, Michael Gove, then Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, announced a government inquiry into the newly established Teesside Freeport. The inquiry followed a series of controversies that had begun to attract national attention. Environmental campaigners and local....

07/08/2026

ISRF Newsletter - August 2026

Featured in the latest edition of the newsletter is a Director's Note on AI, labour and the value of a university education. Also included: upcoming events, blogs and news from our Fellows

Featured in this edition of the newsletter is a Director's Note on AI, labour and the value of a university education. Also included: upcoming events, blogs and news from our Fellows.

30/07/2026

This week, 'Material Crimes' focuses on the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Formerly a vibrant iron ore mining region, Port Hedland is now home to immigration detention centres. Tune in as Ari Jerrems explores the intersection of empire, extractive industries and violent systems of detention

Material Crimes · Episode

28/07/2026

Registrations are open to attend our 7th September event at BLOC, Queen Mary University of London, on ‘French Theory in British Culture’. Join us for a for a one-day programme of readings, discussion and performances on the reception of French theory in Britain and its legacies curated by our Fellow Dr. Colm McAuliffe.

Join us on 7th September at BLOC, Queen Mary University of London, for a one-day programme of readings, discussion and performances on the reception of French theory in Britain and its legacies.

27/07/2026

Shuttle trading emerged as a viable, alternative livelihood, predominately for women, after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. In this article, Claudia Eggart explores how large-scale geopolitical transformations are felt and negotiated at the local level, through the bodies of women shuttle traders

In the early 1990s, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the ‘shock therapy’ imposed from above created a condition in which the collapse of the centrally organized economy and the inability of the state to pay wages, forced newly unemployed professionals to seek alternative livelihoods. Amon...