This book offers a regulatory analysis of the latest EU regulation of banking business models, taking into account both the legal and economic aspects. It examines the rules that influence the evolution of the financial industry and the capital markets by exploring developments specifically within the European Union. It helps readers understand the latest developments of EU regulation and the current needs of banks and other financial intermediaries as they grapple with new business models. Combining research from academics in the field, this edited collection will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students of banking and financial regulation alongside policymakers, bankers, and capital market participants.

This book offers a holistic approach to understanding the "Why," "What," and "How" of tokenized money, examining its necessity, functionality, and implementation strategies. It covers a wide range of topics, from Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) to private stablecoins, decentralized finance (DeFi), and regulatory frameworks. Global perspectives are analyzed through case studies, pilot projects, and early adoption trends worldwide, evaluating the role of tokenized money in financial inclusion, cross-border payments, and the future of global trade. Critical insights are provided, including opposing views, risks, and the broader impact of digital money on financial stability, sovereignty, and innovation.

The book is tailored for financial professionals and industry leaders, highlighting practical use cases, adoption trends, and strategies for leveraging tokenized money. Policy makers and regulators will gain insights into governance, legal frameworks, and global regulatory practices. Academics and students will find a structured framework for courses on fintech, monetary policy, and digital finance.

The book covers some of the most exciting concepts in world politics - how to connect the production of goods and services in one region to the markets for those goods, and how this can lead to conflicts among states that try to create, enhance or subdue these markets. Fundamentally, it seeks to answer an enduring question in world politics - which has more power, states or markets?

This fifth edition examines globalization as a recurrent process by which markets have periodically redistributed economic activity. It links the regional production of goods and services with markets located elsewhere, showing how this can lead to conflicts among states. Taking into account the Covid-19 pandemic and the consequences of the recent revival of industrial policy, as well as the both Chinese and American efforts to redefine the Washington consensus, this book offers coverage of the latest developments in global political economy, offering:

- Increased emphasis on de-globalizaition/slo-balization
- New chapter on migration migration and labour exploitation
- Discussion of the long-term fallout of the 2008 financial crisis
- How Covid-19 exposed the fragility of supply chains
- The debate about the rising income of the global middle class
- More discussion of the role of multinational and transnational companies and associated controversies - regulatory arbitrage and tax avoidance, e.g. Apple and anti-competition
- The role of ICT, AI and biotechnology

This is the ideal text for upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students looking to analyse the influence of global markets on state policies and geo-economic position.

The European Union has reached a crossroads. Its future development - even its survival - faces fundamental challenges in a turbulent global environment. As unity and effective action are imperative, the EU's genuine renewal cannot be postponed. This volume offers a new narrative for European integration that recognises the heterogeneity of the member states, particularly as the Union expands to include the Western Balkans, Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova. Contributions from leading academic and policy experts discuss the reforms and policies needed to address these challenges and harness emerging opportunities. By considering economic, social, institutional, and environmental aspects of development, the book presents a vision for a fair and sustainable European Union. It focuses on economic prosperity, the green transition, global geopolitics, social protection, innovation, and institutional reforms. In an era of geoeconomic fragmentation, the EU's unity and effective action are imperative. This open-access book will be relevant to students, researchers, and policymakers interested in comparative and international economics and European studies.

William B. Bowes investigates the Fourth Gospel as a creative reworking of Mark, situating John within the vibrant literary culture of late Second Temple Judaism. Rather than treating John as an isolated voice, Bowes argues that the Evangelist adopts compositional practices akin to Jewish texts categorized as Rewritten Scripture-works that extend authoritative tradition through interpretive rewriting. This approach reframes John not as independent but as an inspired interpreter who reshapes Mark for a later context and audience.

Bowes begins by reviewing scholarly paradigms on John's use of Mark and mapping these against Jewish methods of source reuse. Bowes then offers five detailed case studies comparing Johannine episodes with their Markan counterparts and with analogous Jewish texts. These include John 1's portrayal of John the Baptist alongside Jubilees 1; the Temple disturbance in John 2 with Mark 11 and the Temple Scroll; the feeding of the five thousand in John 6 with Mark 6 and the Genesis Apocryphon; the Bethany anointing in John 12 with Mark 14 and Philo's De Vita Mosis; and the Roman trial narrative in John 18-19 with Mark 15 and Josephus' Jewish Antiquities. Through these comparisons, Bowes demonstrates how John employs additions, omissions, rearrangements, and theological reframing, all techniques characteristic of Jewish exegetical rewriting.

By situating John's Gospel within this Jewish literary milieu, Bowes illuminates its compositional logic and interpretive purpose, offering a fresh paradigm for understanding the origins of the Fourth Gospel and its complex interplay of similarity and difference with Mark.

Offering a series of studies on key aspects of the Bonhoeffer's theology, this book emphasizes the biblical texture and dogmatic depth of his work and its continuing legacy.

The first part of the volume explores Bonhoeffer's work in Christology, Theology proper, and related doctrines. Ziegler argues that Bonhoeffer's fundamental orientation in theology and ethics is best captured and expressed when he is understood as theology of the Word of God. He offers an exposition of the commonly neglected Part II of Nachfolge, in its treatment of Pauline New Testament texts, as well as Bonhoeffer's promeity compared with the work of Kierkegaard. Ziegler examines Bonhoeffer's extended essay and biblical study on the theme of temptation, and concentrates on the role of eschatological concepts and themes in the Letters and Papers from Prison.

In its second part, the book explores elements of Bonhoeffer's ethical and political thinking, emphasizing throughout the deeply dogmatic substance and orientation of his work in these fields. This part offers explicit discussion of Bonhoeffer's ethics and his interpretation of soteriology, his reading and understanding of the Decalogue for Christian life and ethics, his views of the political service of the church and of Christians; and sustained reading and reflection on one of Bonhoeffer's final prison poems, Voices in the Night.

Work shouldn't be this hard-or this unfulfilling. Burnout, low wages, gig labor, layoffs, and the struggle to balance purpose with pay have made many of us question what work is, and what it could be--and should be.
Ethicist Kate Ward offers a fresh, timely perspective rooted in Catholic social teaching. She explores work not only as a paid job but as purposeful human activity, examining it through five lenses: purpose, care, food, art, and pay. Caregiving, often undervalued yet essential to every life, reminds us that work extends beyond the workplace. Food and art reveal how creative and repetitive labor shape our satisfaction, meaning, and sense of contribution. And pay exposes the persistent gaps between society's valuation of labor and the real costs of living.
Ward draws on the Church's centuries-long reflection on work, justice, and human dignity, showing how its teachings speak directly to the frustrations and potential of modern labor. This first book devoted to Catholic social thought on work illuminates how communities and societies can better recognize, support, and value meaningful human activity.
Making a Life encourages readers to rethink what work is for, who it serves, and how it can nurture human flourishing. Whether you are a student, a professional, or someone simply seeking more purpose in daily life, Ward provides a compelling roadmap for understanding work as a path to both personal meaning and the common good.

This book argues that the cause of liturgical pluralism and disunity on the one hand and the path to unity in liturgy on the other is based on the choice taken between two conflicting interpretations of the divine presence.

The transubstantiation hypothesis championed by the Sacramental model, tacitly accepted by the Kerygmatic model, and strongly encouraged by the Charismatic model has produced conflicting liturgical practices resulting in disunity. The Biblical Sanctuary model applies a phenomenological exegesis to selected Old and New Testament passages showing that the Biblical view of the divine presence temporally grounds the relationship between all of the components of liturgy and by doing so points to a unified liturgy.

This volume collects chapters written to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Philip K. Dick's transformative 1974 mystical experiences, through which he ultimately contextualized his influential and posthumously much-adapted science-fiction and speculative fiction.
Contributing authors here examine the enduring significance of Philip K. Dick and his work, drawing on diverse scholarly perspectives that engage seriously with his self-understanding as Christian, gnostic, mystic, and theologian. Including contextual introduction and overviews, individual chapters focusing on specific works of PKD (as well as some of their adaptations), critical analysis, and examination of their significance within the life and worldview of PKD and his milieu, this collection continues foundational work that has characterized PKD's contributions to science fiction and speculative fiction as significant to its increasingly gnostic trajectory, as well as opening new avenues of exploration that situates PKD's impact within the broader appeal of esoteric worldviews as they have continued to propagate through the counterculture into the mainstream. PKD's commitment and dedication to Christian belief, faith, and practice, as well as Christian gnosis and mystical experience, are foci of particular interest, and this volume challenges the frequent misconception of PKD as exclusively relevant to Gnostic counter-cultural mysticism. Instead, his esoteric Christian gnosis is identified and analyzed as the basis of his ultimately moral and consistently humanistic theology.

This book brings together research-practice partnerships that aim to improve language teaching and learning across varied educational contexts. This book examines how teachers, researchers, school leaders, policymakers and communities collaborate to create evidence-informed language education, and why some partnership efforts succeed while others face challenges.

The chapters present projects from local schools to international networks, showing how sustained dialogue and shared goals can strengthen language learning. Key themes include how partnerships are established, what motivates stakeholders, and how research can be translated into accessible and practical classroom approaches.

By highlighting real examples of collaborative work, the book shows how a more inclusive and balanced approach to research can benefit everyone involved in language education. It offers clear insights and lessons for creating effective, long-term partnerships that support practitioner research, make evidence more usable, and foster meaningful change in how languages are taught and learned.

This book investigates the methods and strategies of how translation and interpreting are taught in Africa, and it identifies the subject matters studied in several African universities, namely the five corners: north, south, west, east, and central Africa. The book goes through its different chapters to measure the efficiency of those translation and interpretation programs, departments, faculties, and schools via a comparison with the rate of employability of the graduates and their reputation in different local and continental organisms. This book reveals the teaching translation and interpretation in Africa which is still adopting the traditional classical methods or adopting new methodologies in this age of AI and recommends methods to face positively the increasing integration of AI at all life levels including in translation and interpretations to highlight the pros and cons of it and prospect or recommend adaptive measures, methods, strategies, or likely methodologies for better outcomes and performance. This book also presents the mapping of major schools, faculties, institutes, and departments of translation and interpreting in Africa. It can serve as a useful academic guide for academic scholars and professional readers on African instructions of translation and interpreting teaching.

This book examines a military occupation famous for institutional changes, state building, and Russia's military and political endeavours in Eastern Europe. However, these topics are not the focus of this book. Instead, it focuses on the actors and realities that are fundamental to the idea of military occupation, namely the armed forces, their deployment, and their interaction with the local population and authorities. At the same time, this book is not a work of purely military history, but also one of social history. It explores how military occupation influenced the everyday life of the people of Wallachia, how the experience of different social groups varied, how victims addressed their troubles before authorities, and how the latter reacted.