March 2016 – Two new issues

In March 2016 two issues of Nordicum-Mediterraneum are being published simultaneously.

The first one, special issue 10(3), contains select proceedings from the third meeting of the Nordic Summer University’s research circle called “Crisis and Crisis Scenarios: Normativity, Possibilities and Dilemmas”, held April 9th—12th, 2015 at the Lysebu Conference Centre in Oslo, Norway. The circle’s research programme runs from 2014 to 2016 and is aimed at examining the concept of crisis as it is used today in academia and public discussions. The published contributions originate in the social sciences, economics included, and legal studies.

The second one, regular issue 11(1), comprises three new articles, which underwent double blind peer-review, two additional article-length contributions and a rich collection of reviews of recent scientific and scholarly literature, one third of which dealing with the Polar regions. As regards the three new articles, the first one, written by Jesper Jespersen, discusses and criticises recent Danish macroeconomic policy and the econometric models upon which the policy has been based; the second, authored by Carsten Friberg, makes an original use of Baumgarten’s aesthetics in order to explain the truth behind the seemingly odd claim that Nordic perception differs from Mediterranean perception; the third one offers an overview and a critical analysis of the Arctic policy statement recently released by the Italian government, Towards an Italian Strategy for the Arctic (Rachael Lorna Johnstone & Federica Scarpa). Concerning the additional article-length contributions, one focuses upon contemporary trends in Nordic cuisine (Francesco Mangiapane), another on Western conceptions of the North (Gianluca Pulsoni). We thank all the authors for their good work.

It should be noted that, as of this month, Nordicum-Mediterraneum migrated onto a new software platform because of security hazards. Unforeseen glitches keep being discovered, unfortunately. We apologise for any technical problems that our readers may encounter and we invite them to contact the journal’s webmaster in order to notify these problems at once and, hopefully, have them fixed promptly.