Please join us for a book launch:

Tahriib – Journeys into the Unknown: An Ethnography of Uncertainty in Migration
By Anja Simonsen

Discussant: Ruben Andersson
Chair: Peter William Walsh

Criss-crossing the disparate realms of healthcare and global finance, war and national security, climate and personal safety, the language and logic of risk have become pervasive in the twenty-first century.

Bobbie leads Vodafone Group's Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) functions globally, with responsibility for managing the ESG strategies and overseeing their delivery. She also leads Vodafone's ESG advocacy, working closely with Policy and Public Affairs colleagues on events, partnerships, and political engagement.

Since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, China has dramatically expanded its overseas presence, becoming a major financier across the Global South, including Africa. But ten years after its launch, the BRI appears to be in decline. Overseas lending from China’s policy banks has now largely dried up. Meanwhile, many of the recipients of China’s financial largesse are struggling to repay BRI-related debts. But in spite of a less enabling context, the systemic drivers of China’s overseas activity are still present.

The talk will focus on the evolution of Rory’s thinking from someone beginning to work on state building and intervention in the late 1990s, then establishing a charity in Afghanistan in 2005, then becoming a Minister for International Development in the British government and finally embracing the cash revolution as President of GiveDirectly

The international standards regarding money laundering and terrorist financing are set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which describes itself as a ‘global watchdog’ whose recommendations ‘aim to prevent these illegal activities and the harm they cause to society’.

Between 1940 and 1945, more than 100,000 airmen were shot down over Europe, a few thousand of whom survived and avoided being arrested. When Men Fell from the Sky is a comparative history of the treatment of these airmen by civilians in France, Germany and Britain. By studying the situation on the ground, Claire Andrieu shows how these encounters reshaped societies at a local level.

Friday 2 June, 3.00 – 4.30 pm:
Prof. Seumas Miller will speak on “Institutional Corruption and Corrosion”

Friday 2 June, 5.00 - 6.30 pm:
Prof. Clemens Sedmak will speak on “What are Decent Institutions?”

he science of complexity has its roots in physics and mathematics. Today it has developed into a discipline that contributes to all areas of science and, more recently, also to humanities. Karoline Wiesner will discuss the fundamental concepts of complexity and explain how they translate from natural to social systems. She will then explore the possibility of doing quantitative political science inspired by physics. Karoline will present recent results obtained on transitions between political regime types.

This is a small, cohesive, and welcoming reading group interested in foregrounding a serious and sophisticated critique of war by revisiting twentieth-century responses to the increasing civilianization of military conflict from the ‘global south’ and aimed at facilitating interdisciplinary conversations within the humanities.