What drives the uneven geographic spread of revolutionary episodes? While structural approaches emphasize pre-existing fault lines, contingency approaches highlight emergent processes. We synthesize these perspectives, arguing that specific triggers shape a revolutionary episode's social geography by activating certain fault lines while leaving others dormant. Through a comparative analysis of three revolutionary episodes in Iran (2017–2022), each with a distinct trigger, we demonstrate how different triggers shape patterns of contention.

To make sense of a moment in which Latino men and white women voted for Donald Trump, and the Conservative party is on its second non-white leader in a row - all at a time of escalating inequality and intense racial animus - we must interrogate what we want both from diversity and representation. These lessons go beyond electoral politics. The aim should be to change the way a system works not simply the way that it looks; so we must recognise that it is possible for organisations to appear different and still act the same.

OxMEND and OxfordSpeaks are delighted to invite you to an evening with Samer Sinijlawi, a Palestinian politician, a reformist member of Fatah, actively involved in peace initiatives in Israel-Palestine and diplomatic efforts toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

We are honoured to welcome Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, as our speaker to the OSGA Annual Lecture on 19 May 2026. Join us as the Prime Minister will speak about the development, governance and politics of Sri Lanka and reflect on what this experience teaches us about the politics of development more generally. The lecture will also dive deeper into the political context and the challenges of sustaining dynamic reform in complex contexts. Dr.

In 2016, the former President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, current Chair of the Elders, and featured speaker in this event, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as he led the peace process in Colombia. After 50 years of conflict, Colombia’s 2016 Peace Agreement did not come easily – it required strategy, diplomacy, fearless determination, and timing. This event at the University of Oxford will mark the tenth anniversary of one of the most significant peace processes of recent decades, and do so from a world roiled by complex conflicts.

Contrary to dominant narratives that portray cultural life in Greece under the Colonels’ dictatorship (1967–1974) as suppressed, this event features Stathis Kalyvas discussing his latest book, which reveals a surprising cultural “Big Bang.” Drawing on new evidence, he argues that, despite censorship and repression, artistic and intellectual activity flourished. The talk examines the conditions that made this possible, highlighting how cultural production can adapt under authoritarian rule.

Digital and artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are increasingly mediating our political and legal interactions. For example, in the ways in which judges and civil servants increasingly rely on algorithmic tools in their decision making, or in how political communications increasingly take place on, and are structured by, digital platforms, challenging legal scholarship to consider what we gain and lose from the penetration of digital and AI technologies into political and legal spheres.

In 2017, over 130 Polish intellectuals, spanning the ideological spectrum, began meeting as the Social Contract Incubator, to design attempt institutions strong enough to hold disagreement.