Ayşe Zarakol is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Cambridge and a Politics Fellow at Emmanuel College. She grew up in Istanbul, Turkey and moved to the US to attend Middlebury College, Vermont (BA in Political Science and Classical Studies).

In the recent Sky News and Tortoise Wargame podcast, Rob Johnson and Deborah Haynes asked our communities 'our enemies know our weaknesses, do you?'. This talk will aim to broaden that question set by using the evidence on societal resilience to ask our leaders, policy makers and decision makers 'our communities know their strengths, do you?'.

Week Eight (13 March, Old Library) Primary: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, Chapters 19-20 Supplementary: Sara Ahmed, ‘A Killjoy Manifesto’ (2017)

As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters another critical phase, questions about how it might end are becoming increasingly urgent. Recent diplomatic initiatives, peace proposals, and shifting political dynamics in Europe and the United States have reignited debate over what a sustainable settlement could look like and on whose terms. This panel brings together military attachés from Austria, Germany, France, Ukraine and the United States (tbc) to reflect on the war’s trajectory, the realities on the ground, and the conditions under which negotiations could become viable.

TBC

Is Brussels strangling European competitiveness with red tape, or quietly building the foundations of a new industrial strategy? At a time of global subsidy races, Chinese competition, and mounting geopolitical pressure, the European Commission is under scrutiny for how it shapes the Single Market, regulates industry, and supports innovation.

Week Seven (6 March, Lecture Room VII) Primary: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, Chapters 17-18 Supplementary: Frances M. Beal, ‘Double Jeopardy: To be Black and Female’ in Black Women’s Manifesto (1969)

This talk explains the impunity gap for the crime of aggression in the current international legal order. It recasts the genealogy of the crimes against peace to the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals through their liberal imperial context. It argues that international criminal law in the postwar order has been premised on the pursuit of liberal imperial peace. Revisiting Judge Pal’s dissent at the Tokyo Tribunal, it brings this genealogy to bear with the current questions of Ukraine and Palestine.

Scholarship on contemporary Pakistan remains fragmented across theoretical and methodological approaches structured by disciplinary traditions (Political Sociology, Anthropology, Comparative Politics, South Asian Studies), journals, and academic institutions in which scholars of Pakistan are dispersed. While this fragmentation has enabled prolific research embracing a plurality of approaches and objects, it has also deprived scholars of shared intellectual platforms in which to engage collectively in a reflection on contemporary Pakistan. This workshop seeks to provide such a space.

TBC