This paper explores the question of what matters and what is made to matter — the ethics of encounters in the intimate entwining of ontology and epistemology. Within an ethics based on matter and mattering, it explores the evolving symbiotic entanglement of humans with each other and with non-human beings, who, with us, make up the world. Our complex symbiotic relationality is discussed in relation to the limiting force of neoliberalism, where all that matters is economic growth and productivity. It asks what hope there is for the survival of the planet, when so many humans, including politicians of almost every stripe, have lost the capacity to think outside the neoliberal box. As things stand, as one scientist observed, it is as if we have a medical, terminal diagnosis, and, although there is a cure, we choose to ignore it. It asks what are those cures and explores the possibility that we humans might learn to respond — to be response-able to our planet, in its state of terminal distress.

How is the white researcher perceived by the border apparatus? What does this interaction say about the border itself? Ethnographic research has framed such questions as a debate on ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ in fieldwork. This is problematic, as it assumes that a researcher can really be ‘external’ to the social worlds they investigate, as if the field site existed in isolation from transnational processes of racialised extraction. This paper challenges such an assumption by arguing that the white researcher cannot be an ‘outsider’ to the North African border: they approach it as the beneficiaries of a system of colonial and capital extractivism that feeds itself through migration control. I build on Ahmed's work on white phenomenology to analyse how various border workers perceived, made sense of and reacted to my presence as a white European woman at three different sites on the Spanish–Moroccan border. I argue that the white researcher is an expected presence at the border, as the accumulated history of (post)colonial encounters leads them where others have been before. Although whiteness opens doors, only a certain kind of performed whiteness remains welcome in the borderscape. The white researcher who appears not to be aligning with or supporting the premises of migration control is perceived by border workers as a potentially disruptive presence, and contained in different ways.

Recent numerical studies have shown that the entire solar system is permeated with arch-like structures originating from all planets. Particles placed on such arches experience planetary close encounters after only one or few orbital revolutions. In this work, we are interested how thece arches, which we associate to encounter manifolds of Jupiter, appear in three dimensions for higher inclinations.

Our results show that about 0.5% of the observed domain [a, e, i] = [2 AU, 11.5 AU] × [0, 0.7] × [0°, 90°] is covered by the manifolds. For inclinations up to ∼5°, the arch-like structures are almost unchanged compared to those initially observed in the orbital plane of Jupiter. At higher inclinations, the number of encounter orbits rapidly decreases to narrow domains where the manifolds stretch up to inclinations of 90° (and above) in a very steep manner.

Literature in Human Geography has given much attention to “encounters” and their impact on negotiating difference in everyday life. These studies, however, have focused solely on cities, while “other” spaces like refugee camps have received little attention to date. In this paper, I highlight the significance of “encounters” in camps by exposing three main types: the “refugee-refugee,” the “refugee-humanitarian,” and the “refugee-more-than-human” encounters. Using empirical examples from Zaatari camp in Jordan, I show that the “refugee-refugee” encounters cannot be fully understood without taking refugees’ culture, background, and urban identities into consideration. I also explain how the “refugee-humanitarian” encounters result in new types of behaviors and might harden the boundaries between both groups. And lastly, I demonstrate how the “refugee-more-than-human” encounters can inform us about refugees’ unique experiences with shelters, space, and materiality. Building on the examples given for each type, this article suggests that “encounters” have the ability to generate knowledge and learnings, which contributes to shaping the space of the camp by either enforcing boundaries between different groups and/or by allowing new and hybrid spatialities to emerge. This not only confirms that “encounters” are an important entry point in understanding the socio-spatial and material composition of refugee camps, but also that further studies in this regard are direly needed. It also suggests that architects and planners need to allow for the “new” to emerge as a result of these encounters and, therefore, to enable flexibility and adaptability within camps’ design and planning.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the presence of European Catholic actors in the Ottoman empire dramatically increased, particularly in the Palestinian provinces. The city of Jerusalem and its surrounding hinterland, referred to here by its Arabic name, Jabal al-Quds, witnessed a particularly intensive Catholic presence owing to its sanctified religious status. This article examines the ways in which the local Arabic-speaking Christian population of Jabal al-Quds interacted with these European Catholic actors. It situates these encounters within the wider scholarship on missionary encounters and cross-cultural interactions in the Mediterranean world, arguing that global historians need to pay greater attention to the inequalities embedded in many of these relationships and the frequent episodes of violent conflict they gave rise to. By inverting the standard Western gaze on Jerusalem and looking at these encounters from the inside out, the article seeks to restore local actors as important players within the global Counter-Reformation, albeit within a context of subjugation, conflict, and stymied mobility.

This article places empires as interlocking parts of a broader global regime, a term invoked as an alternative to a world system. By focusing on connective processes and political contingencies, it presents a strategy that avoids rendering empires as radial hubs of a European-centred arrangement. Two features lie at the core of the approach: the way in which empires competed with each other, and the way in which they imitated, borrowed, and learned from each other. Instead of looking at the cyclical rise or fall of great powers, the accent here is on the tensions and intervisibilities between the parts that make up a whole. The regime was, therefore, inherently unstable and integrative at the same time. The article looks in particular at European empires embedded in the broader, unstable, yet increasingly integrated global context that shaped them. The period at stake covers the fifteenth century to the nineteenth and concludes by pointing at some longer-term legacies. It suggests an alternative political economy to the familiar models of ‘European world system’.