Delighted to see the birth of a Warwick's stellar team led by Jonathan Clarke (Warwick GSD-SCFS) and Raquel Nunes (Warwick Medical School), both IGSD Thematic Fellows, working together to create synergies between IGSD, Economics, Education Studies, WBS, Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, Estates at Warwick and external stakeholders in their multi-million UKRI bid for 'health co-benefits of the transition to next zero'. The effort of their team has been stupendous, and the RIS support - Aidan, Alan, India and Andina - as always, unparalleled! Good LUCK, and sincere best wishesto you all!

Prof. Elena Korosteleva has been awarded Policy Support Impact (PSF) funding to connect her Oxford Belarus Observatory work with Warwick's Ukraine-Belarus hub (WUB-hub). The project will focus on the topical issues in the relations between the two peoples, in the context of the ongoing Russia's war against Ukraine. The project will run webinars, podcasts, policy briefs, workshops and a conference in the summer 2024, and prepare the ground for a large bid. Watch the space! Elena is grateful for the support of Rachael Kirwan and RIS in designing this project.

On 7-11 July Professor Elena Korosteleva was invited to Uzbekistan in the capacity of electoral observer. She observed elections in Samarkand, on Sunday 9 July, having visited 5 polling stations, engaged in conversations with citizens, political parties’ observers, and members of the electoral commission. She further spoke to the Chairman of the Electoral Commission in Samarkand, passing her feedback and observations.

Resilient Communities of Central Eurasia: Responding to Change, Complexity and the Visions of The Good LifeLink opens in a new window
Edited By Elena Korosteleva and Irina Petrova

This book argues for the need to rethink governance through the lens of 'resilience as self-governance'. Building on complexity-thinking, it contends that in the context of change and complex life, challenges are most efficiently dealt with, at the source, 'locally', to make 'the global' more responsive and sustainable.

Resilience as self-governance is advanced as an overriding framework to explore its constitutive elements - identity, ‘good life’, local coping strategies and support infrastructures - which, when mobilized, can turn communities into ‘peoplehood’ in the face of adversity. It is argued that these communities of relations, self-organised and self-aware of their worth, is what makes them so resilient to crises, and what helps them to transform with change; and how they should be governed today. Central Eurasia, spanning from Belarus in the west, to Azerbaijan in the south and Kyrgyzstan in the east, provides fertile grounds for exploring how resilience works in practice in times of complex change. By immersing into centuries-long traditions and philosophy, local experiences of survival, and visions for change, this book shows that governability at any level requires a substantive 'local' input to make 'the global' more enduring and resilient in a complex adaptive world.

This book will be of great value to students and scholars in the fields of Politics including Eurasian politics and the various aspects of Governance. Most of the chapters in this book were published as a special issue of Cambridge Review of International Affairs.

ISBN 9781032290942

Published by
21 March 2023 by Routledge.

Comprehensive Capacity Building in Central Eurasia: tackling sustainability challenges in times of war and crises.
Our delegates were integral to making COMPASS+ a success! Just as coffee beans travel miles before they become coffee, our delegates came from different parts of the world to meet at our one-stop coffee (or rather, conference) place, aka Prince Philip House in London! Our keynote speakers, panel chairs, and participants, were our 'crème de la crème'.