How many shuffles does it take to mix a deck of 52 playing cards? Behind this simple question lies a surprisingly deep mathematical theory. In this lecture, we explore what it means for a deck of cards to be ‘well mixed’, examine several classical shuffling methods, and see why certain methods require far more iterations to produce a random deck than others. We will view card shuffling through the lens of random walks, a mathematical framework used to model phenomena across physics, evolutionary biology and beyond.

Ethnic, racial and religious minorities experience discriminatory behaviour and prejudicial attitudes across multiple areas of their lives, with these experiences accumulating over the life course.

In this seminar, Valentina Di Stasio, Professor of Sociology, and Stefanie Sprong, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, will present the EqualStrength project. This Horizon Europe-funded project aims to investigate cumulative and structural forms of discrimination through cross-national field experiments conducted in nine European countries.

How can liberal democratic actors counter the normalisation of the radical right? While much research documents how radical right ideology and anti-immigration positions have moved into the political mainstream across many Western democracies, far less is known about the counter-strategies that can be used to combat the normalisation of exclusionary policy agendas.

Those who are ‘ideologically colour-blind’ do not express explicitly negative views of racial minorities but instead reject the argument that racial discrimination is a significant social problem (Bonilla-Silva 2003). In the UK, it has been shown that this ideology is as widespread among white voters as it is in the US, with previous research indicating that few racial minorities will subscribe to colour blindness.

Social democratic parties across Europe have increasingly adopted restrictive immigration rhetoric in response to the electoral successes of radical right parties; however, the consequences of such accommodation remain contested. Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte, Associate Professor of Quantitative Political Science, will explore this topic by discussing the design and results of a study examining how attitudes may have changed following UK Labour leader Keir Starmer’s “Island of Strangers” speech, in which he adopted a significantly more rigid stance on immigration.

Attorney General Tim Griffin, Dr Nicholas Cole, and Dr Jason Battles will discuss a new transatlantic partnership to preserve, present, and research the constitutional history of the state of Arkansas, explaining the value of the project's outputs to the legal profession and how it is setting a standard for similar digital research endeavours.

Across Western Europe and North America, immigration is a high-profile issue at the center of election campaigns. Yet, we do not know whether people are committed to their immigration preferences, and how that varies across people who support or oppose immigration. We address these questions with four original surveys from Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. One key finding is that people with pro-immigration preferences are more civically engaged to support immigration.

This is coauthored work with Ryan Jablonski (London School of Economics) and Brigitte Seim (University of Minnesota).