Humanities & Social Sciences

Die Südosteuropa-Studien werden von der in München ansässigen Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft, der wichtigsten Wissenschaftsorganisation der Südosteuropa-Forschung im deutschsprachigen Raum, herausgegeben. Sie dienen der vertieften und interdisziplinären wissenschaftlichen Darstellung wichtiger Themen aus der Südosteuropa-Forschung. Auch Fragen zur aktuellen politischen und sozio-ökonomischen Entwicklung in der Region Südosteuropa werden aufgegriffen. Herausgeber der Einzelbände sind renommierte Repräsentanten der deutschen und internationalen Südosteuropa-Forschung.

It is predicted that church membership in the Protestant church in Germany will be cut in half by 2060. Church tax liability plays a central role in church resignations. Therefore, reform proposals of the church tax law are discussed to prevent church resignations, such as the exemption of young professionals from church tax liability. However, the right to tax is not a purely ecclesiastical matter but has implications for the state sector. Therefore, the collection of church taxes entails framework conditions imposed by the Constitution, which limits the church's freedom of organization. This thesis examines the reform proposals of church tax law regarding their legal feasibility and, in doing so, sheds light on the limits of the tax autonomy of religious communities. Central questions are: How flexible is the taxation right of religious communities? What is the church allowed to do? And what can it implement?

This open access book analyzes the limitations of top-down intervention programs designed by the state to address the problem of unemployment among marginalized communities in Africa and foregrounds the centrality of IKS in fostering entrepreneurship. Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba, Inocent Moyo, and Lethiwe Zondo examine the solutions to these problems within the ongoing debate on decolonization of knowledge and epistemic justice. The contributors argue that when the voices of the marginalized communities are taken into consideration in the design of employment and entrepreneurship policies, such policies would be more effective, affirming the agency and rights within these communities. Using case studies and theoretical research, this book investigates how a better engagement with marginalized communities and indigenous knowledges in the design of entrepreneurship and employment policies could foster more positive outcomes in Africa. This book recenters the voices of Indigenous youth within entrepreneurship programs to highlight the interests, priorities, and challenges of these communities. This edited volume was produced in the context of the African Indigenous Knowledge Research Network (AIKRN) in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation. This was a two-year initiative that ran between 2023 and 2025 to uncover and promote sustainable and scalable opportunities for youth employment grounded in Indigenous African knowledge systems and values. The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the Mastercard Foundation, its staff, or its Board of Directors. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access provided in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation.

There are now many people involved in 'making policy', but there is not a great deal written about how they do it. Most of the books on policy tend to refer obliquely, if at all, to the actual practice of policy work, and offer little guidance to policy workers or students of policy. 'Policy work' seems to be something that you learn on the job. This book addresses directly the nature of policy work. It blends academic and experiential knowledge of the policy process in describing, analysing and evaluating what modern policy workers do in particular situations, and why is that the appropriate thing to do, how it contributes to the policy process, what impact it has, and what can we learn from this about the skills and knowledge required for policy work in complex modern societies.

Computer modelling & simulation

Die Digitalisierung wird in den kommenden Jahren weiter voranschreiten und voraussichtlich ungeahnte Dimensionen annehmen. Den Zustand „offline“ wird es im Zuge von Industrie 4.0 und der damit verbundenen Vernetzung der Anlagenparks, dem modernen Transportwesen in der Luft, auf der Straße sowie zu Wasser und nicht zuletzt dem modernen Leben mit Smart-Home und ständiger Anbindung an das Internet via Smartphone in der nahen Zukunft wohl nicht mehr geben. Aktuell gilt es Mittel und Wege zu finden, die immer Größer werdenden Datenpakete zu speichern und möglichst in Echtzeit übertragbar zu machen. An dieser Stelle setzt die hier durchgeführte Forschungsarbeit an und präsentiert erstmalig die Möglichkeit, polymere optische Wellenleiter (POW) durch digitalen Direktdruck am Beispiel des Aerosol-Jet-Drucks auf der jeweiligen Substratoberfläche benutzerdefiniert aufzubringen. Die so erzeugten POW erreichen aktuell einen Transmissionsgrad von über 91 %, Dämpfungsraten von bis zu 0,2 dB/cm und sind in der Lage bis zu 10 GBit/s zu übertragen, welches sie für die notwendige Substitution metallischer Leiter qualifiziert. Anhand der Grundlagen der optischen Datenübertragung erfolgt eine Definition des Begriffs polymerer optischer Wellenleiter und dessen Abgrenzung zu gängigen Wellenleiterformen durch das verwendete Herstellungsverfahren. Im Anschluss wird der OPTAVER-Prozesses und die damit verbundene Prozesskette beschrieben. Bei der Qualifizierung des Herstellungsverfahrens konnten wichtige Grundlagen für zukünftige weiterführende Arbeiten bzw. erste industrielle Anwendungen erarbeitet werden. So können im AJ-Druck POW mit optischer Güte auf dreidimensionalen Oberflächen aufgebaut werden. Es konnten geeignete Materialien, Prozessparameter, Qualifizierungs- bzw. Charakterisierungs- und Modellierungsmethoden identifiziert und auf deren Eignung hin evaluiert werden. In zukünftigen Anwendungen sollte somit die hier vorgestellte Technologie durchaus berücksichtigt werden, da hierdurch Ressourcen, Material und Gewicht eingespart werden können und darüber hinaus die Möglichkeit besteht, eine voll funktionsfähige optische Versorgungs- und Kommunikationsnetzwerkstruktur an den jeweiligen Bedarf anzupassen. Durch geringe Änderungen der Maschineneinstellungen können Länge, Breite, Höhe und Layout sowie damit verbunden die Datenübertragungseigenschaften manipuliert werden.

Recognition counselling as a support service for persons with qualifications acquired abroad is becoming increasingly important to society and is the same time confronted with legal and social contradictions. This dissertation offers a systematic description and justification of Recognition Counselling as a new form of Specialist Counselling service and shows how educational and vocational guidance can position itself and become more professional in the society of migration.

This is the first volume to offer an in-depth look at (lethal) violence in the Balkans. The Balkans Homicide Study analyses 3,000 (attempted) homicide cases from Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania and Slovenia. Shedding light on a region long neglected in terms of empirical violence research, the study at hand asks: - What types of homicides occur in the Balkans? - Who are the perpetrators and what motivates them? - Who are the victims and what potential protective factors are on their side? - Why do prosecutors dismiss homicide investigations? Amongst other questions and considerations, this brief discusses regional commonalities throughout the Balkans in view of their cultural,historical and normative context. Dismantling negative stereotypes of a growing and thriving Balkan society, this volume will be of interest to researchers in the Balkans, researchers of post-conflict regions, and those interested in the nature of homicide and its motivation, prevention, and various criminal justice approaches.

This study of Gottfried von Strassburg discusses the narrative technique of his romance Tristan (c. 1210) against the double background of Latin rhetoric and poetics on the one hand, and the developing written vernacular tradition on the other. It argues that Gottfried’s poetics represents the attempt to mediate between opposing tendencies in vernacular narrative, the one historiographic and archival, the other fictional and experimental. Verisimilitude, the ‘res ficta quae tamen fieri potest’, occupies an intermediate position between the res factae of history and the res fictae of poetry; it is on this middle ground that Gottfried situates his narrative. This book, originally published in paperback in 1993 under the ISBN 978-0-947623-49-4, was made Open Access in 2024 as part of the MHRA Revivals programme.

The bioeconomy contributes €967 billion annually to the European Union, representing 8.6% of GDP and supporting 16.9% of EU jobs. It constitutes a cornerstone of the Union’s economic resilience and its innovation, competitiveness and sustainability agenda. Moreover, the bioeconomy is integral to the European Green Deal and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), underpinning efforts to ensure food security, advance climate adaptation, safeguard biodiversity, and enable the transition to a low-carbon economy. Yet despite this, investment in the bioeconomy falls short by an estimated €121.8 billion a year in Europe and as much as $777 billion a year globally. This report examines the state of the bioeconomy, the structural drivers of the investment gap, and innovative financing mechanisms to mobilize the capital required to realise its full potential.

Die Zeitschrift Bibliothek und Medien (vormals ABDOS-Mitteilungen) ist das einzige Periodikum, das sich speziell an Osteuropa-Bibliothekarinnen und -Bibliothekare in Europa und den USA wie auch an solche in Ost-, Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa wendet. Sie versammelt ausgewählte Beiträge, Tagungs- (Berichte) und Miszellen aus dem Arbeitsgebiet der ABDOS-Mitglieder und Mitgliedsorganisationen. Besonderer Wert wird auf den Rezensionsteil gelegt. Die Redaktion nimmt Texte in deutscher, englischer und russischer Sprache entgegen.

This brief article expands on the Prolusion given to the LV Settimana Datini, clarifying some additional aspects and proposing a few examples of upward socio-economic mobility. Particular attention is given to two topics: the importance of the acquisition of nobility for social ascension in medieval and early modern times, and the connections between historical processes of social closure, economic closure, and political closure.

This book sets out a new approach to the global flow of skilled migration, one based on ethical, fair, balanced and sustainable frameworks. Instead of focusing on human capital loss and ‘brain drain’, the book argues that we should look towards mutually beneficial outcomes. In a world where demographic shifts, rapid technological advancements connected to automation and AI-enhancement, and evolving economic landscapes are reshaping labour markets, this book serves as a guide for ‘doing’ skilled migration, highlighting shared development, social inclusion and economic resilience opportunities. Seeking to provoke and inspire policymakers, researchers and practitioners, the book sets out a manifesto for transparent, fair and sustainable migration skill infrastructure, based on 13 theses. Based on extensive original data from across the Link4Skills consortium and its sister projects GS4S and SKILLS4JUSTICE across at least 15 countries of origin and 15 countries of destinations, the book addresses critical issues such as the depletion of labour markets in origin countries and the challenges of skill recognition and labour market integration and retention in destination countries. This important new book will be a breath of fresh air for researchers, practitioners and policymakers looking for possible solutions to global migration skill flow challenges.

Industrial / commercial art & design

Despite earlier work by Trubetzkoy, Jakobson and Greenberg, phonological typology is often underrepresented in typology textbooks. At the same time, most phonologists do not see a difference between phonological typology and cross-linguistic (formal) phonology. The purpose of this book is to bring together leading scholars to address the issue of phonological typology, both in terms of the unity and the diversity of phonological systems.