Map attack! In Free the Map, a new publication by Henk van Houtum, traditional maps are challenged and new cartographic stories and representations are discussed and encouraged. A must for our readership.

On June 24, bookstore Evenaar in Amsterdam will declare the independence of the Equatorial Republic. De Facto is one of the guests and will introduce the audience to the exciting world of micronations.

American photographer Susan Meiselas created an extensive visual archive in collaboration with the Kurdish community. A retrospective of her work is now on show in FOMU, Antwerp.

Borders create paradoxes: when you cross them, everything changes but much stays the same. In Borderlands, Dutch journalist Milo van Bokkum describes this paradox and the way locals deal with the complexities caused by these often arbitrarily drawn lines.

Photographer Philippe Dudouit is one of the few foreigners who continues to travel to the Sahelo-Sahara region. His remarkable work The Dynamics of Dust gives an exceptional insight into the shifting alliances in this vast area that is often neglected in world politics.

In Blood and Honey: Encounters at the Borders of the Balkans, Dutch journalist Irene van der Linde and documentary photographer Nicole Segers set out to document the borders of the Balkans. The picture they show is rather grim.

While football may strive to be apolitical and unite people, it has become highly politicised. In Blood and Circuses, Robert O’Connor delves into the collective memory and experiences of football by people who are living in contested territories like Transnistria and Kosovo.

Isolation or interaction? In The Politics of International Interaction with De Facto States the authors explore the conundrum for politicians and policy makers: how to deal with de facto states in the international arena?

In Dragon’s Teeth, writer and diplomat Ian Bancroft explores the paradoxes and absurdities of life in North Kosovo. With interviews, historical anecdotes and first-hand observations, he gives a human face to one of the most disputed territories in Europe.

In War in Ukraine (Lecturis, 2017), multimedia journalist Pierre Crom has documented the highly explosive situation in the Crimea and the Donbas region between 2014 and 2016, when Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk declared independence. With his pictures, Crom brings us closer to the people who got trapped in the chaos of war.