Helmut Brandstätter is a Member of the European Parliament and a prominent Austrian journalist and politician known for his work on democracy, European integration, media freedom, and foreign policy. Europe's democracies are under sustained external pressure: Russian interference in elections, online disinformation at industrial scale, an entrenched dictatorship on the Union's eastern border, and a full-scale war in Ukraine that has reopened the most basic question of how the continent defends itself. Brandstätter sits at the centre of Parliament's response.

The speakers will discuss why the weakening of state institutions may be as pernicious as democratic backsliding and examine the long-term implications for governance, democracy, and the rule of law. This is part of the two-day workshop at the University of Note Dame titled Hollowing Out the State: Understanding Executive-Led State Erosion, which includes DPIR colleagues Ezequiel Gonzalez Ocantos, David Doyle, and Tim Power. The workshop is co-hosted by Javier Perez Sandoval, Associate Member of DPIR, as part of his British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship.

The post-1945 diplomatic order was designed for a different world: two superpowers, clear frontlines, and a set of shared institutional rules that most states, however reluctantly, accepted. That order is fracturing. A rising China, a revisionist Russia, an increasingly transactional United States, and a growing bloc of middle powers unwilling to align with either camp have produced a world that is genuinely multipolar for the first time in decades.

The Production of Value: Metrology, Land Revenue, and the State in Colonial India, 1820-1900 Shankar Nair (Oxford) The mapping of India has long been viewed as an instrument of colonial governmentality and control. In this view, scientific survey and map-making legitimised British territorial possession and extraction, presenting an image of imperial rule at once enlightened and powerful.

Louis W. Pauly, University of Toronto Insurance as Global Governance: Entanglements and Aspirations at the Risk Frontier Of the sectors comprising global capital markets, insurance has received relatively little attention from scholars of international politics. New social conventions and financial instruments arising from the invention of probabilistic reasoning and the discovery of risk began to spread around the world only a few centuries ago.

Professor Charles RH Tripp delivers the 47th annual George Antonius Memorial Lecture. This event will be followed by a drinks reception in the Investcorp Gallery.

Comfort Ero brings her global perspective as President and CEO of the International Crisis Group to Europe’s mounting challenges, examining how changing power dynamics are transforming conflicts and security. Informed by her high-level conversations across continents, she asks whether the EU and key partners such as the UK can rethink their role, draw the right lessons from recent crises, and respond to a growing transatlantic divide.

In this lecture, Professor Stav Shufan-Biton examines how Israeli Jews living outside Israel experience holy time, focusing on Shabbat, Jewish holidays, and local religious and civil holidays such as Halloween and Christmas.

The Annual Oxford Taiwan Studies Conference 2026, hosted by the Oxford Taiwan Studies Programme, explores the theme “Taiwan and Its Neighbours: Indo-Pacific States in a Changing World Order.” As geopolitical competition intensifies and the regional balance of power continues to evolve, Taiwan’s position has become increasingly central to debates on economic security, technological transformation, and strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific. Bringing together leading scholars and policy experts, the conference situates Taiwan within its wider regional context by examining how neighbouring st

Humphrey Battcock Lecture 2026 How to achieve resilient, secure, low-carbon economies: Lessons from China and the United States With global geopolitics - and oil prices - in near daily turmoil, the need for a just transition to green energy is ever more apparent. But how does this seismic change towards green industrialisation actually happen? What does it look like in sectors that most of us interact with daily, like the automotive industry? What are the public policies that can permanently shift major economies and the processes of technological innovation that help or hinder progress?