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Faculty & Experts
08 December 2025

Winter Reads: A Selection of New Faculty Books

The second half of 2025 saw the publication of a selection of books by Geneva Graduate Institute faculty, covering a wide range of topics from human security provisions  in ceasefire and peace agreements to the economic consequences of the second Trump administration and more.

 

De / Colonising Palestine: Contemporary Debates

Edited by Riccardo Bocco and Ibrahim Saïd

This volume seeks to contribute to the broader project of decolonisation by bringing together diverse perspectives for a critical examination of the Palestine Question. It aims to challenge dominant narratives, highlight the resilience and agency of Palestinians, and explore new pathways toward justice and liberation amid ongoing occupation and colonialism.

Topics covered include the question of refugees, the diaspora, the predicament of the Palestinian Authority, hydropolitics, and the settler colonial modes of Israeli control. Additionally, the book delves into Palestinian cultural resistance and the evolution of international coalitions, highlighting a shift in solidarity — from performative to transformative — towards decolonisation and liberation and the associated challenges.

Graduate Institute eBooks no. 8. Graduate Institute Publications. 2025. 697 p. Available in open access.

 

Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Migration and Asylum Law

Edited by Vincent Chetail
Editorial Assistants: Jittawadee Chotinukul and Giulia Raimondo

This concise encyclopedia provides a comprehensive overview of the rapidly developing field of migration and asylum law. It brings clarity on key terms and critical notions, while challenging misconceptions in this highly politicised sphere.

Bringing together a diverse array of leading and emerging scholars and practitioners from across six continents, this encyclopedia examines a broad range of topics and perspectives, such as diasporas, border control, racism and the human rights of migrants. Each entry offers a clear and concise summary of existing and contemporary knowledge, identifies important gaps in the field and outlines new directions for cutting-edge research. Carefully curated, the encyclopedia scrutinises well-known
terms of art, including naturalisation, non-refoulement, remittances and resettlement, as well as addressing intersecting topics like civil society, climate change, migration governance and digital technology.

Edward Elgar Publishing. 2025. 656 p.

 

Transformed by the People
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s Road to Power in Syria

Patrick Haenni and Jérôme Drevon

In December 2024, to global astonishment, former al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led a coalition to overthrow the Syrian regime. This fascinating account unravels HTS’s dramatic transformation since 2019, from a besieged insurgent enclave to a conservative Islamist government.

Drawing on interviews with HTS leaders — including Ahmad al-Sharaa himself — as well as diplomats, dissidents and opponents, the authors reveal the group’s pragmatic evolution while ruling Idlib province, in the face of global and local constraints. They uncover how HTS approached religious minorities, redefined its understanding of sharia, and embraced a non-radical conservative society. HTS reshaped its identity not only in northwest Syria, but on the world stage, aligning with NATO member and secular republic Turkey, confronting both al-Qaeda and Islamic State, and marginalising die-hards in its own ranks, in favour of a popular, mosque-based Islam.

Hurst. 2025. 320 p.

 

Human Security Provisions in Ceasefire and Peace Agreements

Keith Krause, Grazvydas Jasutis, Kristina Vezon and Rebecca Mikova

This publication explores how human security (HS) provisions are integrated into ceasefire and peace agreements across Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. It responds to a growing recognition that sustainable peace requires more
than just stopping violence — it must also address the everyday needs of civilians affected by conflict.

It introduces the Human Security Index (HSI), a tool that evaluates the inclusion of seven HS dimensions: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political security. By applying this index across nine case studies, the report assesses the degree to which peace and ceasefire agreements reflect a human-centred approach, finding that while some agreements include provisions for personal, political, and community security, others neglect vital areas like food, health, and environmental security.

The report distinguishes between short-term ceasefires and longterm peace agreements, highlighting the importance of sequencing and context.

DCAF – Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance. 2025. 292 p.

 

The Economic Consequences of the Second Trump Administration
A Preliminary Assessment

Edited by Ugo Panizza, Beatrice Weder di Mauro, Gary Gensler and Simon Johnson

This book delivers a timely, expert analysis of the economic shifts unfolding following President Trump’s return to office. Amid sweeping tariffs, sharp breaks in global alliances, assertions of presidential supremacy, government downsizing, deregulation, and risks to the rule of law, this volume offers thoughtful, evidence-based insights into how these policies may affect growth, trade, investment, inflation, stability, and the role of the dollar.

Edited by four leading voices in economics and public policy, the book draws on contributions from global experts assessing domestic and international consequences. Their preliminary assessments are clear: heightened uncertainty, lower economic
growth, and risks in the long run to US economic leadership and the multilateral order are reshaping the economic trajectory of the United States and the rest of the world.

CEPR Press. 2025.

 

Reconocimientos
A Memoir of Becoming

Rafael Sánchez

What is the relationship between a writer’s life, milieu, and thought? In this daring and intellectually expansive text, part memoir and part political philosophy, Rafael Sánchez, former Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Sociology, explores the forces and events that shaped him and the nations through which he moved.

Reconocimientos is a book of both personal and political reckoning, from the thrillingly emancipatory possibilities of Venezuela’s plazas to the political promise and disappointments of revolution. Written in the final year of his life, Reconocimientos moves from scenes of Sánchez’s youth in Cuba to fieldwork on the cult of Maria Lionza in Venezuela to confront the terrifying and alluring forces of patriarchal privilege at the base of monumentalist authoritarianism.

Sánchez’s intimate prose speaks with the urgency both of his own mortality and of the political crises of our moment.

Fordham University Press. 2025. 160 p.

 

L’institution monétaire de l’humanité

Jean-Michel Servet

Dans une approche interdisciplinaire, Jean-Michel Servet, professeur honoraire d’études du développement, interroge les confins des multiples dimensions de la monnaie. Celle-ci est appréhendée comme une institution fondamentale pour l’interdépendance des humains. Sont interrogés tant ses fondements archaïques et universaux parmi les communautés de chasseurscollecteurs que notre « modernité » où dominent l’hyper-liquidité, la création monétaire par le crédit des banques commerciales et des projets libertariens tel le Bitcoin.

L’ouvrage contribue aux débats actuels en abordant le potentiel d’une monnaie libérée de la dette et le foisonnement actuel d’alternatives solidaires. Ces redécouvertes du partage et des communs sont nécessaires pour une survie de l’Humanité.

Classiques Garnier. 2025. 919 p.

 

Time in Education Policy Transfer
The Seven Temporalities of Global School Reform

Gita Steiner-Khamsi

This open access book investigates a topic underexplored in policy transfer: time. Drawing on wellknown theories from comparative education, public policy studies, political science, and sociology, Gita Steiner-Khamsi discusses seven temporalities of policy transfer: historical period, future, sequence, timing, lifespan, age, and tempo. The temporal dimension helps explain how the school-autonomy with- accountability reform developed into a global script and was selectively adopted and translated into local contexts around the globe. The author also explains why select features of the reform were eventually institutionalised.

Internationally renowned for her seminal work on policy borrowing, Gita Steiner-Khamsi systematically applies a comparative, transnational, and global perspective to capture the role of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank in advancing and accelerating the reform’s worldwide diffusion.

Springer Nature / Palgrave Macmillan. 2025. Open access.