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HARROGATE will be notable as the venue of the Conference in one or two ways that distinctive. The Association Year is now to begin on January 1st and not in September as heretofore; and, in consequence, there will be no election of president or of new council until the end of the year. The Association's annual election is to take place in November, and the advantages of this arrangement must be apparent to everyone who considers the matter. Until now the nominations have been sent out at a time when members have been scattered to all parts of the country on holiday, and committees of the Council have been elected often without the full consideration that could be given in the more suitable winter time. In the circumstances, at Harrogate the Chair will still be occupied by Sir Henry Miers, who has won from all librarians and those interested in libraries a fuller measure of admiration, if that were possible, than he possessed before he undertook the presidency. There will be no presidential address in the ordinary sense, although Sir Henry Miers will make a speech in the nature of an address from the Chair at one of the meetings. What is usually understood by the presidential address will be an inaugural address which it is hoped will be given by Lord Irwin. The new arrangement must bring about a new state of affairs in regard to the inaugural addresses. We take it that in future there will be what will be called a presidential address at the Annual Meeting nine months after the President takes office. He will certainly then be in the position to review the facts of his year with some knowledge of events; he may chronicle as well as prophesy.

This chapter provides a decolonial critique of Kenya’s encampment and asylum policy. By using a decolonial framework, the chapter examines how asylum, a supposedly humanitarian gesture, has become a political tool of deterrence, dehumanisation and detention in this country. In examining the camp through a decolonial lens, the author advances an Afrocentric perspective and foregrounds that asylum policy across the African continent, which is largely focussed on keeping asylum seekers on this continent, should be understood against the context of colonial relations in Africa. The author contrasts Kenya’s refugee camp with Australia’s offshore detention camp. Central to the author’s critique is Australia’s outsourcing of its offshore detention camps to Papua New Guinea and Nauru which epitomises a neo-colonial engagement with these post-colonies. Inspired by the author’s personal experience as a former refugee, this chapter also challenges refugee literature which is dominated by voices either without lived experience of the camp or produce work that is inadequately attentive to such knowledge.

Killing Eve (BBC 2018–2022) has been hailed as a feminist television show. Its cinematic production values call upon a history of espionage on screen, encompassing international intrigue and glamorised hyperviolent action sequences. Is this violent aesthetic a cathartic reference to newly visible feminist discourse or are we just being sold a new version of old fantasies?

In this chapter Killing Eve is examined in relation to a history of violent women spies on screen, from Emma Peel (The Avengers 1961–1969) to Sydney Bristow (Alias 2001–2006). While Villanelle (Jody Comer) appears to present an amoral account of postfeminist ‘empowerment’, Eve (Sandra Oh) carries echoes of second-wave feminist concerns with community, morality and ethics. With each season the differences between Villanelle and Eve unravel, raising questions about what constitutes ‘quality’ television and how that might intersect with old-fashioned ideas about women's liberation. While the show depicts each character as ‘liberated’ in some respects, they are both entangled in corporate nets which repeatedly put them in danger and pull them back into violence as a form of labour.

It is widely recognized by scholars that superhero stories tend to glorify vigilante justice; after all, these stories often maintain that extralegal acts of violence are necessary for combatting existential threats to personal and public safety. This scholarly common sense fosters a widespread dismissal of superhero stories as uncomplicated apologia for an authoritarian politics of law and order that is animated by hatred of unpopular people and ideas. However, some prominent contemporary Batman stories, including those told in the graphic novels of Grant Morrison and in the blockbuster movies of Christopher Nolan, are ambivalent: in their portraits of Batman and Joker as dark twins and secret colleagues, these stories both legitimize and challenge the countersubversive politics of American law and order.

This conversation highlights the need to rethink how we approach disaster risk reduction in different South Asian contexts.

This paper is based on the webinar held as part of Asia Week at the University of Copenhagen which was organised by Asian Dynamics Initiative and Copenhagen Centre for Disaster Research on the September 12, 2023.

The prominent themes emerging from this conversation represents hybridity, self-rule and self-recovery. Along with this we suggest a fundamental turn to ensuring hope, solidarity and empathy is part of a post-colonial future.

The conversation contributes to the ongoing discussions on moving away from colonial practices in disaster risk reduction and disaster studies broadly.

MR. DENIS HOWELL, M.P., Minister for Libraries, who was to have told Conference how public libraries had progressed since the Act, had to withdraw and so we did not find out how the responsible minister felt about us.

Since its origins during the Second World War, the computer industry has grown more rapidly than any other technology in history, and this growth has spawned a wealth of new terms and manners‐of‐speaking to describe computers and the uses to which they can be put. Such terms are often referred to collectively as computerese. The thesis of Barry's entertaining book is that the use of computerese is increasingly being extended to a wealth of other subjects that are often totally unrelated to computing. Barry refers to this use (or abuse) of language as technobabble: the subject matter and the pleasingly tongue‐in‐cheek style can be judged from the introduction, which starts as follows: ‘This paper‐based, productized bookware module is designed to support the robust implementation of a friendly, context‐driven interface between the developer and the end‐user. Did you understand this sentence? If so, you are fluent in technobabble’.