IGSD News

The WUB-hub conference at RUSI took place on 26/6/2025 and judging by the participants' feedback, was an absolute success. It gathered politicians, civil servants, diplomatic staff, academics, and practitioners from Europe and UK, generating a vibrant and polemic discussion about the future of security and peace in Ukraine and Belarus, with profound implications for the wider Europe and the world. We were immensely happy to host a special panel of our WUB-hub seed-corn finalists with an opportunity for them to present their research projects’ results. Massive thanks to Paul Hansbury for driving this seed-corn project to fruition! The projects’ findings are available on our website for further information.

Our special thanks are also to the participants of the two panels – on Ukraine and Belarus – and their chairs, Andy and Tatsiana, and to our keynote speakers, and to our high-level panellists. We raised many critical issues, and sought ideas on how nurture security and peace in wider Europe. The conference's photos and a video clip, as well as a report with policy recommendations will be available soon on the WUB-hub website.

We are also indebted to the RUSI staff – Emily and Callum, and Zivile and Sabrina, for their intellectual and highly professional support in hosting our event.

Warwick hosted the Sustainability Network Studio on 3-5 June, an international event to facilitate the formation of interdisciplinary research collaborations in and around the area of Sustainability between researchers at three universities: Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) from Belgium; Technische Universitat Dresden (TUD) from Germany and the University of Warwick.

The event was organised as part of the EUTOPIA activities and under the aegis of the Sustainability Spotlight. It was led Prof. Elena Korosteleva in her capacity as Chair of the Sustainability Spotlight, and in partnership with the Sustainability Spotlight leadership team. The event was held over the three days, involving members of the Sustainability Spotlight networks. It was based around pitch presentations from each of the 23 researchers attending and consortium-building for European research funding. The event was facilitated by research support staff from each of the three institutions and is expected to lead to new research collaborations in and around the sustainability area in disciplines ranging from chemistry and engineering to political science, business and economics. From the Warwick team, it included Prof. Stuart Coles (WMG), Prof. Stefan Bon (Chemistry), Dr Fred Dahlmann (WBS), Dr Soroush Abolfani (Engineering), Dr Madeleine Fagan (PAIS), Dr Lory Barile (Economics), Dr Feng Mao (IGSD) and Dr Adela Glyn-Davies (Design).

HoPE NEXUS EUTOPIA CC has been informally launched today with a meeting of all key partners from the University of Warwick (IGSD, SCFS), NOVA University Lisbon (Julia Sexas), University of Ljubljana (Bostjan Kenda), Monash University (Filia Garvaldis), Stellenbosch University (Guy Midgley), and CY Cergy Paris Universite (Dominique Sciamma). Participants focused on defining HoPE key activities, which will include a Sustainability Training School, thought leadership podcasts, a manual of new ideas and interdisciplinary methodologies on researching sustainability, and a Sustainability Forum among others. We look forward to working with everyone and expanding our membership to the newcomers!

This forum critically reflects on the democracy support agenda and its future in light of the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the decline of Western political and normative dominance, and overall global democratic backsliding. It finds that these wars appear systemic in the sense that they sharpen already existing crises in world order. They have evidenced a structural weakness in the international liberal order (ILO) and also intensified practices of competitive norms promotion at the global level, with Russian norms promotion in particular scoring some successes in South America, North Africa, and Southeast Asia. Taken together, these phenomena have allowed autocratic tendencies to gain strength globally, from the Mediterranean to Southeast Asia to Europe and the Americas. At the same time, democracy is also becoming more locally and regionally driven and diverse and might thus possibly become more resilient. In this new world in the making, Western democracy supporters will need to respect the unique historical and cultural contexts that have shaped democracies around the world and become more humble, inclusive, and dialogic with non-Western democratic middle powers such as South Africa and Brazil.