The payment of reparations from the former Central Powers after World War I was among the most politically controversial parts of the Peace Treaties. An important part of these reparations, often overlooked in scholarship, was damage payments from the Central Powers to individual nationals of the Allied Powers. The Mixed Arbitral Tribunals (MATs) were tasked to decide such disputes over private damage claims advanced by Allied nationals or companies against former Central Powers governments.

Carolyn Browne CMG studied for a DPhil in Bacterial Genetics at Linacre College before joining the UK Diplomatic Service in 1985. She served as the British Ambassador to Azerbaijan from 2007-11 and Kazakhstan from 2013 to 2018. She joined the Technical Secretariat of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 2019. She will be in conversation with Linacre Senior Tutor Jane Hoverd, about her career, her current role and the role of the OPCW.

Prof. Kalyvas will discuss the incentives, challenges, dilemmas, and choices of translating abstract arguments into a visual form, using a national history narrative. The talk draws from his experience in co-authoring the seven-part TV documentary series “Disasters & Triumphs” which was broadcasted on Greek TV channel Skai, in January and February 2022.

Democracy is one of the founding values of the European Union (EU) and a guiding principle in its external relations. In the course of the Eastern enlargement, the Union emerged as one of the major democracy promoters. However, the assaults on democratic institutions in some EU member states have undermined the assumption about the positive impact of EU membership on democratic consolidation and sparked a lively discussion whether the Union can safeguard democracy.