Everyone knows that Sun Tzu urged strategists to 'know your enemy and know yourself'. Easily said, but far harder to do. In my new book, I'll be exploring the role of metacognition in strategy - unpicking our uniquely human ability to reflect on our own mind, and those of others. We have evolved a powerful, sometimes instinctive, sometimes deliberative model of reality, including the various agents we encounter in it. We use that model to imagine possible futures. Understanding that others can have different, and possibly false, beliefs is the basis of deception and of strategy.

Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas sought to end fifty years of war and won President Juan Manuel Santos the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet Colombian society rejected it in a polarizing referendum, amid an emotive disinformation campaign. Gwen Burnyeat joined the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, the government institution responsible for peace negotiations, to observe and participate in an innovative “peace pedagogy” strategy to explain the agreement to Colombian society.

Dr Kristin A. Cook is Senior Associate Tutor with the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, SOAS University of London, and Visiting Research Fellow in Literature and Heritage at the University of Plymouth, England. Her primary research investigates US-UK cultural and strategic relations, post-war diplomatic heritage, and early Anglo-American travel writing and political exchange. She has published on presidential legacy, American literary and legal history, and the dissemination of Scottish Enlightenment thought in the early Atlantic world.

A current debate in nuclear studies is the extent to which the United States has pursued non-proliferation, the centrality of this goal in US grand strategy, as well as the related goal of US nuclear superiority. Within this debate US-UK nuclear cooperation has received little consideration. This talk will address this gap by analysing US decision-makers views on US-UK nuclear cooperation, US nuclear superiority and non-proliferation policy, from its beginnings in the Manhattan project to the purchase of Trident.

What was the nature of the international financial system that emerged at the end of the Second World War and how did it change over the next 75 years? Within this system, what were the roles of the United States and the United Kingdom? What were the comparative influences of the Americans and British in shaping international finance? In addressing these questions, this paper examines the interplay of the attitudes and actions of the two governments, the activities of bankers and major economic trends.

We are delighted to invite you to our first event of Michaelmas 2022, which will take place on October 11 (Tuesday) at 20:30 in the Old Library, All Souls College. As always, there will be a wine reception prior to the event at 20:00.

In his book 'Epidemic Illusions', Dr Eugene Richardson contends that public health practices – from epidemiological modeling and outbreak containment to Big Data and causal inference – play an essential role in perpetuating a range of global inequities.

Drawing on postcolonial theory, medical anthropology, and critical science studies, he demonstrates the ways in which the flagship discipline of epidemiology has been shaped by the colonial, racist, and patriarchal system that had its inception in 1492.