In this interview with faculti, Ben Clift summarises key insights and themes from his recent OUP book about the Office for Budget Responsibility. These include the politics of technocracy, the fiscal politics of tackling climate change, and how the rise of populism threatens the foundations of expert-led economic governance.

Joseph Haigh’s article ‘‘Every one (re)membered’: Anxiety, family history, and militarised vicarious identity promotion during Britain’s First World War centenary commemorations’ has just been published open access in the Review of International Studies.

The article explores how during the 2014-18 First World War Centenary key national custodians encouraged Britons to emotionally buy into militarised revisionist narratives about the First World War by vicariously identifying with military ancestors.

Joe wishes to thank PAIS colleagues as well as the PAIS Manuscript Improvement Service (10/10, would recommend!) who provided invaluable feedback on the paper and guidance on approaching the revisions.

Many congratulations to Sam Pordale who has been recognized for his work on the national campaign ‘lift the ban’, which advocates for asylum seekers to be given the right to work, and his service as youth advocates for Refugee Education UK

Feminist Geographies and the Afterlives of the Revolution
A conversation with Dr Dina Wahba and Yasmin El-Rifae

7 February 2024, 16:15- 18:00

Room S0.11, The University of Warwick, Coventry

How can we understand the unfolding politics of the Middle East from a feminist perspective, attentive to the body, home, city, nation and their entanglements? You are invited to join writer and cultural producer Yasmin El-Rifae (Radius: A Story of Feminist Revolution, Verso, 2022) and activist-scholar Dr Dina Wahba (Counter-revolutionary Egypt: From the Midan to the Neighbourhood, Routledge 2024), to explore this question.

Event open to all. Please register through this link: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/news/events/feminist-geographiesLink opens in a new window

The event is funded by the Department of Politics and International Studies, and the Midlands Graduate School ESRC DTP. Artwork is by generous courtesy of Salam Yousry.

Maria Blancas holds a PhD in International Relations from Kings College London. Her research interests focus on the effects of China's economic statecraft in developing countries, although she has also written more generally on Chinese foreign policy, Japan and the Korean Peninsula. Outside of academia, she has worked in several posts for the Mexican Foreign Service (consular-diplomatic branch) and in the private sector as a trade consultant and through participation in research projects with the International Organisation of Migration. Currently she works as an economic and trade advisor in the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Mexico.

Her talk addresses the field of China-Latin American relations - an area that remains underexplored in academic literature, often constrained by narrow economic analyses or Spanish-language publications. Highlighting the tendency of this literature to downplay local agency and generalise diverse cultural, social and economic contexts, this talk will draw upon Mexico as a useful case study to offer insights into China's economic statecraft in developing nations. Additionally, this talk will explore the nuances of Mexico's unique conditions and how they have proved a challenge for Beijing to deepen its presence in the country.

Date: Wednesday, 06/3/24
Time: 16:15-17:30
Venue: Zoom