Daouda Cissé is a Canada-based researcher from Senegal and a visiting scholar at National Chengchi University, in Taipei, Taiwan. He received a Ph.D. in Economics from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, China, in 2011.

This original book is the first serious study investigating the crowdfunding phenomenon, which has developed deep meaning for various stakeholders benefiting from this funding collection mechanism and its innovative new role, especially in the processes of business creation and spread of entrepreneurship. The actors involved -- promoters, supporters, and the platforms through which the campaigns are launched -- constitute an ecosystem in continuous evolution, which has grown dramatically and allows for its further development.

Translator:
Arch Tait, Ph.D.

One of the most peculiar byproducts of media globalization is the creation of audiences close by but out of reach, and far away but within reach. Within Tweeting Distance is a study of one of the most compelling emerging subfields at the crossroads of the fields of international relations and communications: Twitter Diplomacy. Noor Suwwan’s groundbreaking new book proposes a new theoretical classification framework for Twitter Diplomacy and applies it to four Arab state-actors.

Twenty years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, we can now see that the War on Terror profoundly affected Western self-understanding and the secular liberal image it sought to project onto a global canvas at what was widely assumed to be the end of history. The dramatic change in awareness that 9/11 brought about was particularly vivid, this book maintains, in the media that sustained and displayed the West’s self-image.

In Russia’s Military Interventions, Elnur Ismayilov analyzes Russia’s recent military interventions in Georgia and Ukraine by assessing the driving factors – the interests fueling Russian involvement and the decisions that fostered the resulting wars. Ismayilov covers the creation and transformation behind Russia’s post-Soviet perspectives on Ukraine and Georgia and explores the panorama of post-Soviet Russia’s foreign policy from the 1990s up to the turbulent present, in which Ukraine and Georgia’s pro-Western orientations have remained a core concern of the Kremlin.

In this intrepid study, noted Nigerian historian Onianwa Oluchukwu Ignatus investigates the air war component of the Nigerian-Biafran War, a crucial postcolonial conflict in Africa. It focuses on the Biafra’s air operations against oil installations and facilities owned by multinational oil companies in Nigeria. In addition to exploring global airpower historiography, this study explores the tactical aspects of how the renewed air war changed the military equation of the conflict when both sides were at loggerheads in peace settlement and relief arrangements.

Awareness of eco-literature has recalled the central ideology of environmentalism - “to think globally and act locally.” As this volume shows, various tags of contemporary discourse have emerged, including transnational, cosmopolitan, hybridity, diaspora, and generally cultural. These concerns highlight such global environmental problems as biodiversity, climate change, and developing new forms of interconnectedness with local and regional communities. In this context, contemporary discourse becomes of immediate concern in understanding the environmental crisis.

A History of International Oil Politics is both an argument for multi-theoretical pluralism and a proposal for a theory-synergetic approach in international relations. Murad Gassanly, a distinguished international relations scholar and rising British politician, explores how international relations paradigms could be utilized in approaching the vital field of international oil politics, specifically historical issues of international energy politics and comparative case studies of energy transmission networks – the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline and the Southern Gas Corridor.