Edo-period Japan was a golden age for commercial fiction. But how to understand the politics of this literature remains contested, in part because many of its defining characteristics—formulaicness, reuse of narratives, stock characters, linguistic play, and heavy allusion to literary canon—can seem to hold social and political realities at arm’s length. Writing Violence: The Politics of Form in Early Modern Japanese Literature offers a new approach to understanding the relationship between the challenging formal features of early modern fiction and the world beyond its pages.

Join us for the third Massada Annual Lecture with Professor Mouna Maroun. Professor Maroun is a distinguished Arab-Israeli neurobiologist with a PhD in psychobiology from the University of Haifa and a postdoc from Paris XI Orsay, France. Since October 2024, she has served as the Rector of the University of Haifa – the first Arab to lead a higher education institution in Israel.

President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi is remaking the Egyptian republic. This involves a double rupture with the First Republic: radical redefinition of the social contract that was established in the decade following the overthrow of the monarchy in 1952 into an ethos of “nothing for free,” and transformation of the presidential system to concentrate Sisi’s powers to normalize a juridical state of exception and recast the republic in the mould of permanent military guardianship.

Over the past five decades, Greece has undergone a significant transformation in its perceptions of the United States—shifting from a period marked by widespread anti-American sentiment to one increasingly characterized by Americanophilia. However, this evolution has been neither linear nor uniform, with notable fluctuations and divergences across different segments of society.

Drawing on extensive experience in EU external action and diplomacy, Giulio Venneri will present key insights from his recently published book 'Learning Policy Advice in International Affairs and Diplomacy'. Designed to bridge the gap between research and policy, the book offers practical guidance to students pursuing careers in diplomacy as well as advice to academics on how to interact more effectively with the policy world. The speaker will also reflect on the ongoing policy-making challenges related to the EU Enlargement policy, with a focus on the Western Balkans.

“It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” This maxim, frequently attributed to Frederic Jameson, seems to reflect much of the content of our daily news, fueling a growing preoccupation, both political and artistic, with dystopias and decline. But there are also counter efforts – Post capitalist literature, for one. A unique experiment took place in Israel in the years 2020-2023: a think tank was established, dedicated to envisioning a new social and economic reality in the Middle East.

Medical experimentation on humans was criminalized under international law following the Nuremberg Trials, where Nazi physicians were prosecuted. However, similar practices continued thereafter in several Western countries, including the United States, Australia, Britain, Sweden and Canada. This talk will present the first criminological investigation into this phenomenon, aiming to identify criminal clusters of varying degrees of harm and involving differing medical procedures: (1) experiments based on racial ideology, (2) military-related experiments, and (3) general medical experiments.

Black Sea regional security is an integral part of European security. At a time when the US is leaning towards withdrawing from Ukraine and the Black Sea, Europe, the UK, and Turkey need to do more and cooperate closely to ensure Ukraine’s statehood and thwart Russian domination of the Black Sea, thereby directly challenging European security. The discussion will focus on how key Western actors' policies towards the Black Sea are changing and whether their policies are likely to further converge or diverge from one another.
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH CHATHAM HOUSE AND GERMAN MARSHALL FUND

Join us for the second annual Social Sciences Division Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Lecture, featuring award-winning journalist, bestselling author, filmmaker and Oxford alumna Afua Hirsch.

Regional economic conditions affect livelihoods and the geography of political resentment. Yet, individuals do not equally partake in their region’s economic fortunes, and their perceptions of relative deprivation need not be the same. Grievances are likely to be shaped not only by income disparities but also by how personal prospects are tied to regional conditions. We argue that the interaction between subjective individual and regional relative deprivation crucially affects perceptions of shared experience and systemic unfairness.