Blavatnik Book Talks: The Forever Crisis

This is my reaction from the talk, have not read the book. In The Forever Crisis, the author presents complex systems thinking as a framework for addressing the world’s intractable challenges, particularly at the level of global governance. The book critiques the traditional top-down approaches that are pushed by powerful institutions like the #UN, highlighting…

The Present and Future of US Politics: Foreign Policy

Speaker: Peter Feaver (Duke University)As the United States heads into a high-stakes presidential election, this seminar series explores the structural problems and political challenges behind the headlines. We examine why American politics is so polarised and ask: what is at stake in the 2024 elections? The seminars will open with a short presentation by an…

Location and Rebellion: Rethinking the Relationship between Revolution and State Capacity

Speaker: Mark Beissinger (Princeton) DRAFT First impression is that everyone is very shiny and affluent, young academics and future bureaucrats. Looking at how location affects revolution challenge and state repression. Safe but infective in rural areas, close to power in urban areas revaluations have more impact but are much more dangerous for the revolutionaries. State…

The problem with academic “thinking” in activism

The common issue with these Oxford seminars, is outlined in my notes, this is the disconnect between academic discourse and the real-world challenges faced by activists and movements. Here’s a breakdown of the key problems I have highlighted: In summary, the common issue is the disconnect between academic discourse and the lived experiences of activists…

The Meyerstein Lecture in Archaeology 2024: The social worlds of Bronze Age animals

Although cattle and sheep were central to the everyday lives and wellbeing of Bronze Age communities in northwest Europe, they are strangely lacking from our narratives of the period. After the Neolithic, it seems, archaeologists rarely consider domestic animals to be interesting. However, Bronze Age people clearly thought otherwise, as the careful deposition of complete…

Contrasting Balkan utopias: Navigating migration and futurity in the physical remnants of Yugoslavia

“Irregular” #migrants moving along the Western #Balkan Migration Route aspire to competing visions of Europe, and Europeanness, and along their journeys they encounter multiple competing, overlapping, or intersecting political projects. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in #Slovenia since 2021, this presentation will explore how various imaginaries of Europe are instantiated in the wake of Yugoslav socialism,…

Marx on Nature Conference

10:30 am-11:30 am: Alex Colas (Birkbeck): Marx, Capitalism and Maritime Temporalities 11:30 am-12:30 pm: Gareth Dale (Brunel): Marx, Growth Ideology, and Degrowth 12:30-14:00: lunch break 14:00-15:00: Nick Stevenson (Nottingham): Democratic Socialism, Degrowth and the Commons: Raymond Williams, Marxism, and the Anthropocene 15:00-16:00: Martin Crook (UWE Bristol): Marx and the Ecocide – Genocide Nexus 16:00-16:30: coffee…

Cyril Foster Lecture 2024: On the Declining Success of Civil Resistance

Professor Erica Chenoweth will explore the puzzling decline in the success of civil resistance movements in the past decade, even as unarmed movements have become more popular worldwide. The findings have implications for the future of nonviolent alternatives to armed struggle, as well as to the ability of pro-democratic movements to defeat authoritarian challenges. Erica…

Algorithms of War: The Use of AI in Armed Conflict

Joel H. Rosenthal (Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs), Janina Dill (University of Oxford), Professor Ciaran Martin (Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford), Tom Simpson (Blavatnik School of Government), Brianna Rosen (Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford) Algorithms of war Arriving early, the panel and audience are ugly broken people, priests and worshippers of…