Ari Bersch

Ari Bersch is currently a first-year MPhil student in Comparative Government at University College. His research interests include voting behavior, political communication, political parties, the impact of artificial intelligence on politics, and the role of public opinion in shaping foreign policy.

The Cultural Impact of Visits to the Roman Metropolis: Jews and the Big City

As a leading administrative-cultural center, the Roman metropolis constituted a major tourist attraction for visitors from both the center and the periphery of the empire, among them Jews from the land of Israel. Using ancient Jewish culture as a test case, this lecture addresses the extent and type of influence of such visits on local cultures. It focuses on how the encounter with the city’s spatial aspects, its buildings and traditions, left their impress on Jewish culture, law, collective memory, and art in the first centuries CE.

James Henderson

I am a first-year Political Theory candidate at University College. I am interested in the deliberative democracy, the politics of information intake, and how longstanding and stable democracies might be stressed or capitalise on modern technological developments.

Makiko Miyazaki

Makiko is a DPhil (PhD) candidate in International Relations at New College, University of Oxford. She examines the process by which states pursue higher status in international society by learning and achieving mastery of key practices such as international law and diplomacy. She draws on practice theory and the English School, and her current empirical focus is on Japan from the 19th century to the contemporary period.

Lara Forlino

I am a DPhil student in Politics at the Department of Politics and International Relations. My doctoral research, supervised by Professors Ezequiel González-Ocantos and David Rueda, is generously funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Nuffield College.

Tanisha Mohapatra

I study how material inequality and social identity interact to shape democratic representation and redistribution. My dissertation investigates why political inclusion for marginalized groups translates into substantive representation, and when it fails to do so. Related projects examine accountability in weakly institutionalised democracies, and the causes and consequences of dynastic politics.

Precision Warfare: AI, Genomics, and the Future of Biosecurity

Advances in artificial intelligence are accelerating the capacity to decode, manipulate, and weaponize biological information at unprecedented scale. This panel examines the convergence of AI and biotechnology in enabling precision targeting of genetic traits—reshaping deterrence, attribution, and the ethics of warfare itself. As genomic datasets expand and machine learning enhances predictive bio-design, the boundaries between defense, health security, and population control blur. What happens when code meets code—digital and biological—and selective vulnerability becomes a function of data?

TITAN FORGE: NATO, the Russia-Ukraine War, and the Race for Machine Speed

The next war will not wait. As NATO grapples with a grinding Russia-Ukraine conflict, the pace of innovation has become both weapon and weakness. Operation TITAN FORGE—a high-intensity wargame—plunges participants into a near-future battlespace where algorithmic speed, human frailty, and cost asymmetry define survival. Across simulated frontlines, AI-enabled systems execute faster than human command can comprehend, autonomous drones exploit microsecond windows, and “human-on-the-loop” oversight begins to fracture under pressure.

In Trump's world, is there room for multilateralism?

The last year has been marked by a dramatic turn away from multilateral cooperation towards the assertion of national interest. Many attribute this directly to the re-election of President Trump, and while he is the most prominent spokesman and catalyst for this change, the talk will trace how the US move away from multilateral cooperation began much earlier. This shift is also not limited to the US, as other countries also focus on the promotion of national interest over international solidarity.
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