Talks by Oliver Daddow, University of Nottingham and Christopher Gifford, University of Huddersfield

This presentation by Paul Timmers and debate with James Morrison will investigate whether EU cybersecurity policy provides an effective response to the growing call for strengthening sovereignty. The debate on sovereignty is heating up across the world, nationally and certainly also in Europe. The recent State of the Union of President Juncker of the European Commission carried the headline “The Hour of European Sovereignty.” Sovereignty is threatened by a confluence of increasing international tensions, growing dependency on digital technologies, and mounting cyber-threats and cybercrime.

The United States government has described the intent to "defend forward" against continuing espionage, disruption, and destructive intrusion campaigns executed by hostile actors in cyberspace. This defense concept will reportedly leverage cyber capabilities and other response options to blunt ongoing threats through action in gray space, closer to hostile systems and networks.

In seeking to understand the motivations of voters in the EU referendum it is now clear that the ‘education’ effect (whereby those with degrees are much more likely that those without to have voted ‘remain’) was one of the strongest influences on individual voting behaviour in the referendum. At the same time education, rather than income or social class, anchors the ‘new’ or ‘other’ dimension of British politics with those with degrees substantially more liberal than those without.

The extremely severe restrictions on humanitarian operations have been one of the defining features of the Syrian conflict. Humanitarian operations have been severely impeded by a range of constraints, including active hostilities, repeated attacks against those providing humanitarian and, in particular, medical assistance, shifting front lines, proliferation of parties to the conflict, and the instrumentalisation of assistance by all belligerents.

China’s re-emergence and its assertive policies in the South China Sea over the past decades have led to the belief that Southeast Asia has no choice but to become part of China’s zone of influence. However, Southeast Asia has many choices. This lecture will look at the longer history of Southeast Asia and suggest the many options that ASEAN will have in the coming decades.