Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now well established as a transformative technology across multiple industries as well as in government and in scientific research. The impact of AI comes from its effect on intelligent decision making and predictions as well as from its facilitation of greater automation. As a general purpose technology, AI's beneficial impact can be considered akin to the invention of electricity or the development of the Internet. Such capabilities, however, are tempered by concerns, such as privacy infringement and automation induced unemployment.

Abstract: Since the Ukraine crisis, the dominant perspective on Russian foreign policy has come to emphasize its increasingly confrontational, even revanchist, nature. Experts have focused on discontinuities in Russian foreign policy either between the ostensibly more pro-Western Yeltsin presidency and the anti-Western Putin presidency or between the more cooperatively inclined early Putin (2000-2007) and the more confrontational late Putin (2007-present). Dmitry Gorenburg argues that Russian foreign policy preferences have been largely continuous since the early 1990s.

When does political violence (used in the context of interstate war, intrastate war, insurgency and counterinsurgency, or terrorism) lead to victory? When does political violence produce a stable peace compatible with the political goals of the victor and in which violence is no longer necessary? Much has been written on this question from the strategic, operational, and tactical points of view. In this paper, I examine this question from the socio-political standpoint. Specifically, I theorize the socio-political conditions for the emergence of a stable peaceful order out of violence.

Lisa Nandy was elected as the Member of Parliament for Wigan in May 2010.

Lisa graduated from Newcastle University in 2001 and went on to work for the Labour MP Neil Gerrard MP, specialising in housing and homelessness. From 2003-2005 she worked for the youth homelessness charity Centrepoint, and later spent five years at The Children’s Society, working with some of the most disadvantaged children in the country.

It has become almost an article of faith that China's rise is destined to produce confrontation, it not outright conflict, with the west. But there is hope amidst the gloom. China's transition to an innovation- and services-driven economy will require fundamental institutional and political reforms which are likely to produce greater convergence with those of the west.

Annette Idler will discuss the research and conclusions reached in her new book from OUP. The book will be available to purchase at a discounted price.


A wine and canape reception will follow.