Category: News

Outdoor Singing in Modern Britain – A Sensory and Emotional History by Abbi Flint and Clare Hickman, Reader in Environmental and Medical History at Newcastle University, has been published open access in the Cambridge University Press series Elements in Histories of Emotions and the Senses.

The work brings together historical sources and contemporary experiences to explore the interplay between singing, sociality, body, and meaning in the English landscape over the past century. It explores the connections between air and song and between singing and movement, through the context of the early twentieth century open-air recreation movement. This is supplemented by recent literature on singing and wellbeing, and the experiences of a contemporary walking choir captured via interviews in the field. The authors argue that outdoor singing has been part of co-constructed soundscapes of the modern English leisure landscape, and ask what this meant for those who participated in collective open-air singing and rambling. They explore how open-air singing connected with conceptions of the countryside, with a sense of fellow-feeling, and how this might have both reified and challenged normative ways of being in landscapes.

This is the fifth book published at Newcastle University as a result of the UKRI open access policy for long-form publications, with open access costs covered by UKRI funding.

Of the experience, Clare Hickman (co-author) had the following comment:

[T]he process was very straightforward and quick, and it is good to know that non-traditional monographs are included in the UKRI policy.

For further details of the previous books published through this funding scheme, follow the links to the published works and related blog posts:

• Pushing the Paradigm of Global Water Security, published October 2024
• Diaspora Reads: Community, Identity, and Russian Literaturocentrism, published March 2025
• Sustainable Food Consumption in China: Changing Foodscapes, Values, and Practices, published June 2025
• Everyday Islamophobia, published September 2025.

The UKRI open access policy aims to ensure that findings from research funded by the public through UKRI can be freely accessed, used and built upon. The policy applies to peer-reviewed research articles and long-form outputs, namely book chapters, monographs and edited collections.

Full details of the UKRI open access policy and how Library Research Services can support making outputs open access can be found on our UKRI Policy for long-form publications page.

If you have any questions or concerns about the policy, and how this might affect any current or future publications, please contact openaccess@ncl.ac.uk.

Sustainable Food Consumption in China: Changing Foodscapes, Values, and Practices by Alex Hughes, Shuru Zhong, Mike Crang, Guojun Zeng, Fernando Fastoso, Hector Gonzalez Jimenez and Bob Doherty, has been published open access by Routledge, as part of their Critical Food Studies series.

Sustainable Food Consumption in China investigates the current and potential roles of food consumption to address sustainability challenges in China.

Focusing on the megacity of Guangzhou, it looks at sustainability and food from the perspectives of government, commercial, and third sector actors, and through the lived experiences of consumers. It charts the rapidly transforming landscapes of retail across urban China and the ways they are shaping and are shaped by everyday food consumption practices. Using a multi-method research approach of quantitative and ethnographic data, it provides readers with a rich and comprehensive understanding of the relationships and tensions between contemporary practices of food consumption and pressing sustainability challenges. It unpacks the complex foodscape in contemporary Chinese cities, from traditional wet markets to online deliveries, from supermarkets to farmers markets and alternative food providers, to understand the values and practices promoting and hindering sustainability in food consumption.

The book is intended for academics from advanced undergraduate level through to Masters, postgraduates and scholars across key social science disciplines including Geography, Sociology, Anthropology, and Business, and internationally given the global interest in the focus on China.

This is the third book published at Newcastle as a result of the UKRI open access policy for long-form publications, with open access costs covered by UKRI funding. You can read the other books:

• Pushing the Paradigm of Global Water Security, published in October 2024
• Diaspora Reads: Community, Identity, and Russian Literaturocentrism, published in March 2025.

The UKRI open access policy aims to ensure that findings from research funded by the public through UKRI can be freely accessed, used and built upon. The policy was updated at the beginning of 2024 from previously focusing on peer-reviewed research articles to now include long-form outputs, namely book chapters, monographs and edited collections.

Full details of the UKRI open access policy and how we in Library Research Services can support you to publish open access can be found on our UKRI Policy for long-form publications page.

If you have any questions or concerns about the policy, and how this might affect any current or future publications, please contact openaccess@ncl.ac.uk.

Diaspora Reads: Community, Identity, and Russian Literaturocentrism, written by Dr Angelos Theocharis from the Newcastle University School of Arts & Cultures, has been published open access (OA), by Modern Humanities Research Association/Legenda https://www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Diaspora-Reads

Diaspora Reads explores the role of literature and reading practices in the community life of Russian-speaking migrants in Britain. Russophone culture abounds with myths about the special mission of literature and the writer in society. The broader cultural myth of Russian literaturocentrism encompasses the sacralisation of highbrow literature, the idolisation of authors as heroes and martyrs, and the idealisation of avid readership. In the diaspora, literaturocentrism takes on a new form, retaining elements of the Russian and Soviet tradition while primarily responding to the needs of migrant readers.

Following the discussions, games, and celebrations of a community book club in London, Diaspora Reads demonstrates how collective reading enables migrants to shape shared cultural identities, forge communities, build a long-distance relationship with their homelands, and become members of a global network of readers.

Angelos Theocharis is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Department of Media, Culture, Heritage at Newcastle University. Diaspora Reads is his first monograph.

This is the second book published at Newcastle as a result of the UKRI open access policy for long-form publications, with open access costs covered by UKRI funding. You can read more about the first edited book Pushing the Paradigm of Global Water Security, published in October 2024.

The UKRI open access policy aims to ensure that findings from research funded by the public through UKRI can be freely accessed, used and built upon. The policy was updated at the beginning of 2024 from previously focusing on peer-reviewed research articles to now include long-form outputs, namely book chapters, monographs and edited collections.

Full details of the UKRI open access policy and how we in Library Research Services can support you to publish open access can be found on our UKRI Policy for long-form publications page.

If you have any questions or concerns about the policy, and how this might affect any current or future publications, please contact openaccess@ncl.ac.uk.