Keith Hyams has been awarded a Leverhulme Research Project grant for his project ‘Anthropogenic Global Catastrophic Risk: The Challenge of Governance’. The project looks at long term threats to humanity arising from advances in emerging technology, aiming to identify the political obstacles that stand in the way of progress on governing these risks, and ethical guidelines within which new governance solutions for specific risks will be advanced. The project focusses on three case studies, in nanotechnology, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence, and will be undertaken in collaboration with Co-Investigators in the departments of biology, chemistry and computer science.

We are delighted to announce that the Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) is ranked 3^rd out of 81 UK Politics departments in the The Times/The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018; a position we have now held for three years in a row. This influential national league table reflects latest data on student satisfaction (NSS), research excellence, and a range of other indicators.

We are particularly proud to see that PAIS is ranked 1^st for student experience and 2^nd for teaching quality among the elite Russell Group of UK Politics departments.

The University of Warwick is ranked 9th overall — a full University press release can be found here.

Our latest position in The Times/The Sunday Times follows on recent successes in other national league tables – notably 3rd place in The Guardian University Guide 2018 and 4th in The Complete University Guide 2018 — cementing our position as one of the very best Politics departments in the UK.

We thank all staff and students who have contributed to this impressive and sustained achievement. With a number of exciting and ambitious plans for the 2017/18 academic year and beyond, we look forward to building on these successes in the months and years ahead.

A series of academic and public engagement activities will take place in association with the concluding work of the ERC Starting Grant Project “Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty” 26-29 September, 2017.

On 26 September, 2017, a workshop is organized on the theme “Migrants’ and Diaspora Responses to the Rise of Right-wing Populism” with 16 participants from different parts of Europe and USA at Warwick University in London. The workshop will discuss how migrants and diasporas mobilize either against or in support of populist movements in an era of increasing anti-immigrant sentiments and attempts to redefine national belonging.

The full program could be found here.

On 26 September, 2017 at 6 pm. the ERC project team is presenting research findings during a public event at the conflict journalism Frontline Club in London, on the Soft Power of Diasporas. Prominent journalists from the Financial Times and the BBC will join the ERC “Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty” team in a lively discussion.

More information about this public event is available here.

On 28-29 September, 2017 the final conference “Beyond the Territorial State: Diaspora Mobilizations and Contested Sovereignty in the European Neighborhood” will take place in the Radcliffe Conference Centre at Warwick University, with embedded panels of a second workshop on “Diasporas and Challenges to the Statehood in the Middle East and North Africa.” The conference will gather more than 30 presenters and discussants from different parts of Europe, the USA, and Canada.

The presentation of the ERC project's findings and contributions to theory, methodology and empirical data gathering will take place on 28 September, 2017 at 9:00 - 11:00 in Radcliffe. Please join us!

A full program of this academic conference is available here.

A report on the publications, academic and public engagement activities conducted by the ERC “Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty” team (2012-2017) is available here.

James Brassett, Juanita Elias, Lena Rethel, Ben Richardson and Luke Bantock have launched a new website for teaching IPE. The site is called I-PEEL: International Political Economy of Everyday Life and uses familiar objects and practices as routes into the discipline.

The site is open access and features 29 contributions from leading scholars in IPE and cognate fields. Funding support was provided by IATL and PAIS.

A recent paper by Dr Vincenzo Bove, "Police Officer on the Frontline or a Soldier? The Effect of Police Militarization on Crime", published in the August issue of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, has received worldwide coverage.

It was cited and discussed by The Economist, in the United States section of the print edition and by journalistsresource.org.

The article was also cited by The Washington Post and The New York Times in articles about President Trump’s plans to give surplus military weapons to local law enforcement agencies and in The Wall Street Journal.