UCL Political Science Events

For our first Policy & Practice seminar of academic year 2024-2025 we were joined by ex-Ambassador Simona Leskovar. The ex-Ambassador talked about her own experience both in trying to get Slovenia elected to the UN Security Council, but also more broadly about her experience in the UK and within the UN. The talk included a discussion as to why small states matter in international security. We are delighted that Sir Mark Lyall Grant  GCMG  joined us to give a response. Meet the speakersex-Ambassador Simona Leskovar Simona Leskovar is Ambassador of the Republic of Slovenia to the Court of St James's until August 2024. Prior to this appointment, she was State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia. Ambassador Leskovar is a career diplomat for 28 years of service in Slovenian diplomacy. She served as Slovenian Ambassador to Japan and Republic of Korea, was Deputy Permanent Representative of Slovenia at Permanent Mission of Slovenia to the United Nations in New York and member or head of several Slovenian delegations and missions to various conferences and events within the UN. Her first post as a diplomat was Washington DC.   Ambassador Leskovar holds a position of the EU adviser to Slovenian Foreign Minister during the first Slovenian EU presidency in 2008. She was later Director of Young Bled Strategic Forum and the national Focal Point for Responsibility-to-Protect. Simona Leskovar studied international relations at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, and at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael in The Hague. Ambassador Leskovar initiated the MFA programme 'Young Ambassadors', a mentoring project that was organized together with foreign female Ambassadors in Slovenia, and aimed at encouraging young women to consider a career in diplomacy and international relations. Ambassador Leskovar was appointed Program Director of Bled Strategic Forum at the end of August 2024. Sir Mark Lyall Grant  GCMG Sir Mark Lyall Grant served as the United Kingdom's Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the UN from 2009 to 2015. During this tenure, he served as President of the Security Council four times. He subsequently served as a National Security Adviser during David Cameron and Theresa May's premierships. Following his retirement from the civil service, he is now a Visiting Professor at King's College London and a strategic advisor. Chair: Prof. Veronika Fikfakis Professor of Human Rights and International Law in the UCL Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy. 

Political Strategist, New European editor-at-large, mental health campaigner and co-host of the country's Number 1 podcast, The Rest is Politics, Alastair Campbell came to UCL for a special opening event of the UCL Department of Political Science's Policy & Practice seminar series for 2023-24, in partnership with the UCL European Institute and UCL Policy Lab. His new book "But What Can I Do?" went straight to the top of the Sunday Times best-seller lists. In it, Campbell argues that the next generation has to rescue politics from the populist, post-truth morass into which it has fallen in the era of Trump, Johnson, Brexit and Putin. This event explored the hopes and concerns of young people from across UCL and London about engaging in politics, and consider how our political system can become more open to their participation. Facilitated by the brilliant Julia Macfarlane of ABC News and joined on stage by students from UCL Political Science, Alastair will seek to address the challenge laid out in the sub-title of his book: Why Politics Has Gone So Wrong, and How YOU Can Help Fix It. Watch the Julia Gillard speech:  • Julia Gillard misogyny speech voted m...   

Our democratic system is not working as well as it should: on this, both the public and most experts agree. But what exactly are the problems? What are the pros and cons of the potential solutions? And are such changes feasible?  Drawing on recent Constitution Unit research into public attitudes to democracy, as well as his own work on electoral systems, referendums, citizens' assemblies and other democratic institutions, Alan Renwick explores answers to each of these questions. Alan argues that there are no quick fixes, but that a series of changes in institutions, practices, and behaviours may lead to valuable improvements. With an introduction by Prof Meg Russell and an appreciation by Prof Anand Menon.

Debates over standards in public life have a long history. Their evolution is partly cyclical, reflecting reactions to extended periods of one party in office. But there is also long-term growth in a belief that ministers cannot be trusted to behave well and that more formal structures are needed to check their power. Of late, the view that the abuses and challenges to institutional checks have been greater under some recent prime ministers – particularly Boris Johnson – has produced what amounts to a culture war between, on the one hand, defenders of the elected government – often citing an almost presidential mandate dismissing unelected regulators and judges – and, on the other hand, critics who would constrain or even eliminate ministers from some decisions. This debate is in danger of becoming very polarised. So where can a new balance be achieved? In this lecture, Peter Riddell will argue that the solution must recognise the legitimate rights of ministers as the elected government while also strengthening independent scrutiny where needed. Parliamentary committees should also play a more active role in holding both ministers and watchdogs/regulators to account. Introduction by Prof Meg Russell. Response by Rt Hon Jack Straw.  Professor Sir Peter Riddell Peter Riddell was appointed an Honorary Professor at UCL in March 2022. He has taken a long interest in constitutional issues, parliament and standards in public life, both as a journalist and subsequently in various other roles. He joined the Financial Times in 1970 after graduating from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, with a degree in History and Economics. He served as Political Editor for seven years before becoming the paper's Washington Bureau Chief. He joined The Times in 1991 serving as its chief political commentator until he retired from journalism after the 2010 election. He has written ten books on politics, parliament and political careers. Towards the end of his journalistic career, he became involved in other activities, initially as a trustee and then chair of the Hansard Society from 2007 until 2012, and then as Senior Fellow and then Director/Chief Executive of the Institute for Government from 2012 until 2016. He served for 18 months as a member of the Gibson inquiry into the involvement of UK intelligence agencies into the alleged mistreatment of detainees and rendition. In spring 2016 he was appointed to the independent office holder post of Commissioner for Public Appointments where he served an extended term of five and a half years until September 2021. His other public roles have included conducting a review for the Cabinet Office into the future of the Committee on Standards in Public Life and serving on the Parliamentary and Political Service Honours Committee. He has had close contacts with the academic world in various forms, notably with the Constitution Unit over more than two decades. He chaired the advisory panel of the ESRC's Constitutional Change research programme from 2001 to 2006, is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a recipient of the President's Medal of the British Academy.

Drawing on evidence from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, it shows that certain global best practices do exist, and that effective government institutions share a common set of foundational management practices. But different institutions inside governments vary in the extent to which such practices are in place – despite sharing the same governance laws. Prof Schuster therefore advocates for a data-informed approach to introducing management good practices in government institutions one-by-one, rather than pursuing government-wide best practice laws. Mentioned in this lecture: ‘Merit, Tenure and Bureaucratic Behavior: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment in the Dominican Republic', Comparative Political Studies, 2018, Vol. 51(6), p. 759–792, 2018 (with Oliveros, V.) ‘The Causal Effect of Public Service Motivation on Ethical Behaviour in the Public Sector: Evidence from a Large-Scale Survey Experiment‘, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2019, Vol. 29(3) (with Meyer-Sahling, J. and Mikkelsen, K.) ‘Government Analytics: An Empirical Guide to Measuring Public Administration‘ Washington DC: World Bank, forthcoming (co-edited with Rogger, D.) ‘Getting the basics right: How to manage civil servants in developing countries‘ (with Meyer-Sahling, J. and Mikkelsen, K.) World Bank, Governance for Development Blog, May 2018 ‘What the UK civil service can learn from developing countries on pay and acting on evidence‘ (with Meyer-Sahling, J. and Mikkelsen, K.) UK Civil Service World, May 2018 Find more of Christian's publications via https://www.christianschuster.net/

The current conservative super-majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has a chance to reshape American law in a dramatic way. One such way is in the realm of administrative law, as members of this conservative majority have sought to restrain the powers of federal bureaucratic agencies, as in the 2022 case of West Virginia vs. EPA. Similar future decisions could profoundly affect federal policy implementation and law enforcement, possibly shifting powers to state and local governments.Meet The Speakers Ilaria Di Gioia is Senior Lecturer in American Law and Associate Director of the Centre for American Legal Studies at Birmingham City School of Law. Her research focuses on questions of law and policy within the U.S. federalist structure. She is the editor of the British Journal of American Legal Studies, as well as the Inaugural Philip Davies Fellow of the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. Finally, she also serves as Honorary Vice Consul for Italy in Birmingham, representing the Italian government as well as over 10,000 Italians in the British Midlands. James Tierney was the attorney general of Maine from 1980 to 1990. He currently is a lecturer at Harvard Law School where he teaches classes on state attorneys general and has directed the attorney general clinic. Before coming to Harvard, Professor Tierney was the Director of the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia Law School. Since his time as Maine AG, Professor Tierney has also consulted with serving state attorneys general and the National Association of Attorneys General. In this role, he worked with then-AGs in negotiating the tobacco settlement of the 1990s. https://www.stateag.org   Rachel Augustine Potter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. She has published extensively on bureaucratic politics and she published her award-winning book, Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy, in 2019. Professor Potter also contributes to the Brookings Institution Centre on Regulation and Markets and has served as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States. Chaired by: Dr. Colin Provost, UCL Department of Political Science

This panel explores these nuances and tackle pressing questions: What are the pros and cons of China's involvement in Africa? Does China's aid and FDI pressure Western donors to adjust and improve their delivery? What are the long-term impacts of Chinese involvement and what does the future of China-Africa cooperation look like? Meet the speakers: Dr Sam Brazys (University College Dublin) Dr Huan Zou (SOAS) Chair: Dr Adam Harris Unfortunately Mr Solomzi Mhlana (1st Secretary Political, South African High Commission to the Great Britain and Northern Ireland) had to cancel and could not attend this seminar.

LGBTIQ+ people continue to face persecution and discrimination in virtually every region of the world. Many of them are forced to migrate or seek asylum. Our panellists will discuss the unique challenges that LGBTIQ+ migrants and asylum seekers face, in their home countries, in the course of migration, and in receiving countries.Dr Sarah Singer is Senior Lecturer in Refugee Law at the Refugee Law Initiative, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her research interests are refugee law and policy, human rights and migration. She is a recognised expert on criminality and asylum, and has broader research expertise on humanitarian accountability, detention and protection of LGBT+ asylum seekers.  Dr Aydan Greatrick is a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Geography, University of Leeds and an expert in LGBTQ+ asylum support, protection and forced migration. He has over seven years experience researching the intersections between forced migration, humanitarianism, gender and sexuality, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ asylum and displacement in Europe and the Middle East.  Chair: Prof Phillip Ayoub, Professor of International Relations, UCL

Democracies are facing a drawn-out contest with authoritarian states that is entangling much of public policy with global security issues. In Global Discord, Paul Tucker lays out principles for how democracies can approach relations with China and other illiberal states without sacrificing their deepest political values or recklessly risking their safety. Combining history, economics, and political and legal philosophy, Tucker offers a new account of international relations. Rejecting intellectual traditions going back to Hobbes, Kant and Grotius, and deploying instead ideas from David Hume, Bernard Williams and modern mechanism-design economists, Tucker describes a new kind of political realism that emphasizes power and interests without sidelining morality. Incentives must be aligned with values if institutions are to endure. The connecting tissue for a system of international cooperation, he argues, should be legitimacy, creating a world of concentric circles in which we cooperate more with those with whom we share the most and whom we fear the least. Avoiding wishful thinking about the security of our way of life, and drawing on three decades as a domestic and international policy maker, Tucker applies the book's principles to the international monetary order, including the role of the U.S. dollar, trade and investment regimes, and the global financial system. The event featured a discussion with the author, and a panel of three speakers: Richard Bellamy (Professor of Political Science at UCL), Jeff King (Professor of Law at UCL) and Juliet Samuel (Columnist at The Telegraph). 

Tony Stower is an experienced public servant and is currently Principal, Online Safety Policy at Ofcom.Maeve Walsh is a policy and government relations consultant with expertise in digital and health policy. A former civil servant with 17 years' experience in Whitehall, she has been an Associate with Carnegie UK since 2018 and is an advocate for legislation to prevent online harms.Ruth Smeeth (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) is a British Labour Party politician who was the MP for Stoke-on-Trent North from 2015 until 2019. Since 2022 she has been a member of the House of Lords. In June 2020, she became chief executive of Index on Censorship, an organisation which campaigns for freedom of speech.Edina Harbinja is Reader in Media/Privacy Law at Aston University. Her principal areas of research and teaching are related to the legal issues surrounding the internet and emerging technologies. She is a member of the Advisory Council at Open Rights Group, which aims to protect the digital rights of people in the UK, including privacy and free speech online.

Marc Stears is an internationally regarded academic, political strategist, speechwriter and executive educator, who specialises in creating dynamic collaborations between academic researchers and broader society. Currently the inaugural Director of the UCL Policy Lab, Marc has previously been Director of the Sydney Policy Lab at the University of Sydney,  CEO of the New Economics Foundation, Professor of political theory at the University of Oxford and chief speechwriter to the UK Labour Party. He enjoy a worldwide reputation as a leadership coach and communications strategist, having supported Board and Executive Committee members for major organisations including for some of the world's largest companies. He is the author of several books from the world's leading presses, including Out of the Ordinary published by Harvard University Press in 2021. Along with his co-author Tom Baldwin, he is currently completing a new book entitled England, Whose England? due out from Bloomsbury next yearTo get the latest news and events from the UCL Policy Lab sign up for their newsletter.

Midterms typically serve as a referendum on the president and the party in office. But in an election year that has seen a roiling economy, the overturning of abortion rights, and the resurgence of Donald Trump, conventional wisdom may not apply. How is voter mobilization different this year, and what results should we expect? How would changes to the composition of Congress affect domestic and foreign policy? In this panel discussion, three leading experts - James Boys (Tufts University), Kyle Kondik (University of Virginia), and Lindsay Newman (S&P Global) - will examine the significance of the midterms and the state of democracy in America more broadly.

About the speakers Ignacio Garcia Bercero participated in the Uruguay Round negotiations that led to the establishment of the World Trade Organizations. Between 2001 and 2005, he headed the unit in the European Commission responsible for WTO dispute settlement. Since 2005, he has been Director in DG trade where, among other responsibilities, he was chief negotiator for the EU-Korea Free Trade agreement, the EU-India Free Trade agreement and the negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Ignacio is currently director for multilateral trade policy and strategy and is Visiting Professor at UCL's School of Public Policy. Stephen Adams is Senior Director in advisory firm Global Counsel. He has more than 15 years of experience in European and British public policy and regulation, chiefly in the field of international economic policy. He has also been an Executive Director of Goldman Sachs International, based in London. Stephen is Senior Research Associate at UCL's School of Public Policy. Chair: Professor Lauge Poulsen, Professor in International Relations and Law, UCL Department of Political Science

About the speakerKlaus Welle is the Secretary-General of the European Parliament, a position he has held since 2009.Find out more.Chaired by Robert Hazell.

In addition to celebrating her Jubilee, thought is turning to the future of the monarchy, and what changes might be expected after she is gone. Dr Bob Morris (expert on church and state at the Constitution Unit, UCL) will talk about the next Accession and Coronation; Dr Craig Prescott (constitutional lawyer at Bangor University) will explain the need to update the Regency Acts; Dr Carolyn Harris (royal historian at the University of Toronto) will discuss previous jubilees, the role of Consorts, and the upbringing of future monarchs; and Prof Helle Krunke (Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Copenhagen) will talk about the Golden Jubilee of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, also being celebrated this year, and the differences between the British and European monarchies.

In this panel discussion, three leading experts—Sarah Isgur (The Dispatch), Megan McArdle (Washington Post), and Matthew Weil (Bipartisan Policy Center)—will examine the causes of distrust in American elections and investigate its broader impact on the resilience of U.S. democracy.About the speakers:Sarah Isgur is a staff writer and host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions for The Dispatch, a professor at George Washington's School of Media and Public Affairs and George Mason Law School, a contributing editor at Politico, and an ABC News contributor. She most recently served in the Department of Justice as the Director of the Office of Public Affairs and Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General during the Russia investigation. She was backstage for more than a half dozen presidential debates as the Deputy Campaign Manager for Carly Fiorina's presidential campaign. Isgur clerked for the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Northwestern University.Megan McArdle is a Washington Post columnist and the author of "The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success." Previously, she was a Bloomberg View columnist. McArdle wrote for the Daily Beast, Newsweek, the Atlantic and the Economist and founded the blog Asymmetrical Information.Matthew Weil is director of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Elections Project where he is responsible for all of the organization's voting-related policy development efforts at the state and federal level, the Business Alliance for Effective Democracy, and collaborations with social media platforms to provide authoritative election information to voters. Prior to joining BPC in February 2013, he worked at the Department of the Treasury on domestic finance issues in the office of public affairs. He also previously served as a research and policy analyst at the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and as a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute. Weil holds a Master of Science in Government Analytics degree from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.Chair: Dr Thomas Gift 

In this seminar we will hear from Professor John Edmunds OBE, Professor Dame Theresa Marteau, and Professor Michael Parker.

n this talk about his new book, Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us, UCL associate professor of global politics Brian Klaas draws on over 500 interviews with some of the world's top leaders – from the noblest to the dirtiest – including presidents, war criminals, cult leaders, terrorists, psychopaths, and dictators to reveal the most surprising workings of power: how children can predict who is going to win an election based just on the faces of politicians; why narcissists make more money; what makes a certain species of bee more corrupt than others; whether a thirst for power is a genetic condition; and why being the second in command is in fact the smartest choice.From scans of psychopathic brains, to the effects of power on monkey drug use, Klaas weaves cutting-edge research with astonishing encounters (including a ski lesson with the former viceroy of Iraq, tea with a former UK prime minister, and breakfast with Madagascar's yogurt kingpin president). Written by the creator of the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, Corruptible challenges our basic assumptions about power, from the board room to the war room, and provides a roadmap for getting better leaders at every level. Brian Klaas grew up in Minnesota, earned his DPhil at Oxford, and is now an associate professor of global politics at University College London. He is also a weekly columnist for The Washington Post, host of the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, and frequent guest on national television. Klaas has conducted field research across the globe, interviewing despots, CEOs, torture victims, dissidents, cult leaders, criminals, and everyday power abusers. He has also advised major politicians and organizations including NATO, the European Union, and Amnesty International. He is the author of four books, including the most recent: Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us.Moderator: Ian DuntFIND THE BOOK: CORRUPTIBLE: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us

The Profit Paradox describes how a handful of companies have reaped most of the rewards of technological advancements—acquiring rivals, securing huge profits, and creating brutally unequal outcomes for workers. The consequences are immense, from unnecessarily high prices, to fewer startups that can compete, to rising inequality and stagnating wages. Jan Eeckhout also offers concrete solutions about how to fix the problem and restore a healthy economy.

Tensions have been mounting rapidly since Russia massed 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border in December. What does Putin hope to achieve? How should the West respond if the Russians do invade? Can the tensions be defused by the US-Russia talks in Geneva? Four distinguished experts join us to answer these questions: General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Sir Roderic Lyne, former British Ambassador to Russia, Orysia Lutsevych, Research Fellow and manager of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House, and Steven Pifer, former US Ambassador to Ukraine.

SpeakersDina Ionesco is Manager in the Adaptation Division at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat, focusing on human mobility and climate change. Lena Dobrowolska and Teo Ormond-Skeaping are an artist collaboration from Poland and the UK whose work focuses on climate change. They won the 2019 Coalition for Art and Sustainable Development (COAL) Prize with their project ‘You never know, one day you too may become a refugee'.Chair: Dr Elisa Calliari, Senior Research Fellow, UCL Department of Political Science

The Covid Inquiry is due to start work in the spring, chaired by Baroness (Heather) Hallett, a former Court of Appeal judge. It will be one of the most complex inquiries in legal history, and highly charged politically, with 150k deaths so far, and the pandemic far from over. This seminar brings together three speakers involved with previous high profile inquiries: Lord Phillips, chair of the BSE Inquiry (1998-2000); Sir Brian Leveson, chair of the Inquiry into Press Regulation (2011-12); and Margaret Aldred, secretary of the Iraq Inquiry (2009-16) chaired by the late Sir John Chilcot. They will pool advice on how best to set up a complex inquiry to ensure that it works speedily and efficiently, victims feel they have been heard, and the findings are accepted as legitimate.

In this seminar four senior political correspondents reflect on what journalism was like at the start of their careers; how it has changed during their lifetimes; and how that has changed the way the press reports on politics, and the way politicians respond. Trevor Kavanagh was for many years Political Editor of The Sun, Catherine MacLeod was Political Editor of the Glasgow Herald, Alice Thomson is a columnist on The Times, and Patrick Wintour is diplomatic editor for The Guardian.

Rory Stewart has been a diplomat, soldier, explorer, politician, and is now an academic at Yale. In 2003 he became deputy governor in two remote provinces of Iraq, recorded in his book Prince of the Marshes. In 2005 he moved to Kabul to establish an NGO, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation. From 2010 to 2019 he was an MP, becoming chair of the Defence Select Committee, and Secretary of State for International Development. In this seminar he is joined by Dr Weeda Mehran, an expert on warlords, conflict and peacebuilding in Afghanistan, adviser to national and international organisations, and to the House of Lords inquiry on Afghanistan. Together they will discuss the challenges of nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq: should the West intervene in such countries, and what can western intervention realistically achieve?

The Covid pandemic has exacerbated many existing inequalities and introduced new ones. There could hardly be a more pressing time to understand how inequalities arise, which ones matter, why, and how they should be addressed. Professor Sir Richard Blundell (UCL), Research Director at IFS and PI for the Deaton Review: Inequalities in the 21st Century, will lead the discussion with a presentation of some of the key inequality issues facing the UK. He will be joined by Professor Penny Goldberg (Yale), Chief Economist of the World Bank Group 2018-2020, to examine the role of globalisation and trade on inequality.Presentation slides:RichardPenny

Official statistics and evidence have been central in ensuring that the government has the best possible data, not just on infections and deaths, but on social behaviour, the impact on the economy, etc. As chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir David Norgrove is responsible for safeguarding the production and publication of official statistics: he will discuss how data and statistics evolved during the pandemic, and the strengths and weaknesses of the way Government handled the data.Sir David Norgrove is a businessman and government official, who has been chair of the UK Statistics Authority since 2017. The UK Statistics Authority is an independent body which oversees the Office for National Statistics, the Office for Statistics Regulation, and the Government Statistical Service. He was previously the first chairman of The Pensions Regulator, and then chair of the Low Pay Commission. ACCOMPANYING SLIDES

This seminar presents – and vigorously critiques – a new edited volume, “American Political Economy”, which aims to reorient our understanding of US politics. Democratic erosions and economic inequalities, two of the most pressing political problems of the United States and its rich western peers, can only be understood in light of the economic, geographic, institutional and racial contexts in which politics are contested.SpeakersJacob S. Hackeris Stanley Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University. A regular media commentator and policy adviser, he is the author or co-author of five books, numerous journal articles, and a wide range of popular writings onAmerican politics and public policy, including the highly influential Winner Take-All Politics (2010). Professor Desmond Kingwho is the Andrew W Mellon Professor of Government at the University of Oxford. He specializes in the study of theAmericanstate in US executive politics, race and politics inAmericanpolitical development, and the financial bases of US politics.Edward Luce is the US national editor and columnist at the Financial Times, and co-author of the Swamp Notes newsletter, which covers the intersection of money, power, and politics in America. He is the author of three highly acclaimed books, including The Retreat of Western Liberalism (2017) and Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent (2012). Dr. Lucy Barnes is Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at UCL. She specialises in the comparative political economy of rich western democracies (including the USA), with particular focus on the interactions of political institutions and individuals' ideas, attitudes, and behaviours, in the politics of economic policy-making.

In this seminar Michael Jacobs will explain the main issues to be discussed at the Summit, the key players, and likely outcomes. He will place COP26 in the wider context of multilateral cooperation and the domestic politics of acting on climate change. Michael was climate adviser to Gordon Brown when he was Prime Minister and was heavily involved in the (unsuccessful) Copenhagen COP15 in 2009. He subsequently advised the French and UK governments and others in the run-up to COP21 in 2015, which resulted in the historic Paris Climate Agreement. He was a founder of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. He is now Professor of Political Economy and a fellow of the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Sheffield.

The covid-19 pandemic has been a severe test for the European Union as well as for its member-states: a test in which European cooperation has often been found wanting, in particular when it came to its vaccine programme. But this test has also led to a deepening of European solidarity, manifested most prominently in the European recovery fund.What have been the stresses and strains caused by the pandemic on the EU and the member-states? Has the EU managed to turn the pandemic into an argument for European cooperation, or will it go down  as having hindered the ability of the EU nations to respond? Will the EU emerge stronger or weaker from this crisis, and will the pandemic have pulled us together or apart?SpeakersIsabel de la Mata Barrancos, Principal Advisor for Health and Crisis management, European Commission, DG Health and Food SafetyDr Iveta Nagyova, President of the European Public Health Association, EUPHA & Head of Department (Social and Behavioural Medicine), Pavol Jozef Safarik University in Kosice, SlovakiaLuuk van Middelaar, Professor of Foundations and Practice of the European Union and its Institutions, Leiden University & former adviser to Herman van Rompuy, first President of the European CouncilChair: Dr Claudia Sternberg, Head of Academic Programming, UCL European Institute

Less than two months into his term, President Joe Biden is signing his first major piece of legislation, a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. What are his other domestic priorities, and who are the leading figures in his administration to deliver them? What obstacles does he face in Congress and elsewhere, and can he overcome them? To discuss the prospects for Biden's domestic policies moving forward, we welcome a dynamic panel of experts: Andra Gillespie (Emory); Michael Hartney (Hoover Institution); Casey Mulligan (University of Chicago); and Colin Provost (CUSP). Julie Norman (CUSP) will moderate.

Nick Herbert is a former Minister, and the founder of GovernUp. Last summer he launched the Commission for Smart Government, to tackle the systemic problems of government in the UK: departmental silos, a muddled centre exercising weak financial management, unaccountable agencies, inability to learn from mistakes. In this seminar he is joined by Sir Suma Chakrabarti KCB and Sophie Miremadi, two fellow Commissioners, to explain how acute fiscal pressures and technological change require government to be smarter: and they set out the Commission's emerging ideas to make government more efficient, more capable and more accountable.

The British media tend to report on Brexit only from the British point of view. In this seminar we redress the balance by inviting four foreign correspondents based in London to talk about how Brexit has been viewed from France, Germany, Italy and Poland. What conclusions have leading European countries drawn from the whole Brexit process; and where do they see the future, for the EU and the UK?

Deirdre Hutton has experienced all those spheres of regulation, and more, having just stepped down from ten years as chair of the Civil Aviation Authority. In this seminar she is joined by Professor Cary Coglianese, director of the Penn Program on Regulation, and Walter Merricks, former Chief Ombudsman of the Financial Ombudsman Service. Together they will discuss what makes for successful regulation, the risks of excessive regulation or regulatory capture, with illustrations from their very wide professional experience.

In this seminar he is joined by Ciaran Martin, Chief Executive of the National Cyber Security Centre 2016-2020, to discuss spycraft, how raw intelligence is analysed, and how intelligence officers then use that information – often contradictory or incomplete – to build the most accurate possible image of the world. The ways of thinking used in intelligence can also help ordinary citizens sort fact from fiction in their everyday lives.

China regards the island of Taiwan as a breakaway province; Taiwan's leaders say it is an independent state. As China rises to superpower status, it has shown greater interest in reclaiming territory long regarded as its own, in the South China Sea, along the Himalayan border – and in Taiwan. The growing tensions could drag the US into the fray. To discuss the implications for security, peace and the people of Taiwan, we have three distinguished experts: Prof Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute; Susan Thornton, a retired senior US diplomat and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution; and Dr Chun-Yi Lee, director of the Taiwan Studies programme at the University of Nottingham.

John Micklethwait is editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, and Adrian Wooldridge is political editor of the Economist, and author of their Bagehot column. In their latest book they analyse the disastrous failure of many western countries to control the Coronavirus, and what it exposes about the weaknesses of their systems of government. It is a wake up call to learn from the more successful responses of countries like Singapore or South Korea. What are the lessons in better government the west can now learn from the east? To discuss the UK's capacity to learn such lessons, and the likelihood of its doing so, they are joined by Philip Rycroft CB, former Head of the UK Governance Group in the Cabinet Office, Permanent Secretary in DExEU, and now Visiting Professor at Edinburgh University.

Government interventions in response to Covid-19 make clear that the state can act as an extremely powerful guarantor of economic and health security. But has the crisis, and the subsequent governmental response, shifted voters' attitudes about the role that the government should play in society more generally? In a recent study, Tim Hicks, Tom O'Grady, and Jack Blumenau (UCL) examine whether the pandemic has led to a reversal of 'small state' ideology. To discuss the implications of their findings they are joined by Lord (Stewart) Wood, special adviser to Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, and by Ailbhe Rea, political correspondent at the New Statesman.

Jack Straw was Foreign Secretary in the Blair government from 2001 to 2006. His five years at the Foreign Office saw him grappling with every conflict zone from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, the accession of ten new states to the EU, the failed accession bid from Turkey, the bombing of the Twin Towers on 9/11, and the Allied invasion of Iraq, led by the United States. At this seminar he will reflect on the role of Foreign Secretary with Sir David Manning, foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair from 2001 to 2003, and at the time of the invasion of Iraq, British Ambassador to the US.

To discuss these worldwide trends, how to counter them, and how worried we should be about a populist rise in the UK, we are joined by three international experts:Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of FriendsRory Stewart, former Cabinet Minister and 2019 candidate for the Conservative Party leadership, now Senior Fellow at Yale UniversityProfessor Nadia Urbinati, author of Me the People: How Populism Transforms DemocracyChair: Professor Meg Russell, Director of the Constitution Unit.Further ReadingAnne Applebaum - How my old friends paved the way for Trump and BrexitAnne Applebaum - How to beat populists when facts don't matterRory Stewart - What is wrong with us?Nadia Urbinati  - Populism? It's not fascism, and also democracies Are “Elastic”Nadia Urbinati  - The pandemic hasn't killed populism

Last summer, we saw a statue of Bristol slave trader, Edward Colston, thrown in the harbour by Black Lives Matters protesters. Other statues of racist, colonial or controversial figures have also been taken down or been the sites of protests and University and other buildings have been renamed. A conversation has started to take place about how we reckon with the past, how we deal with the inheritance of public art and statues that we have, and how we make use of our public spaces and art for commemoration and historical understanding in light of what we need in the present.

Speakers:Lorriann Robinson is the founder and Director of The Advocacy Team, a consultancy practice providing policy, advocacy & campaigning services to international organisations. She is the co-founding partner of and advocacy lead for The Equity Index.Alex Martins is an independent researcher, facilitator and advocate passionate about creating a more equitable international development sector. She is the co-founder and research lead for The Equity Index.Chair: Professor Jennifer Hudson

With the dust finally settling on one of the highest stakes US elections in recent memory, pollsters, pundits, academics, and policymakers are looking to make sense of what happened. What are the key take-aways from the 2020 US elections? Why did the results turn out as they did? What are the main policy implications of the elections, and how will they shape US governance in the coming years? In this panel discussion, four leading experts—Ross Douthat (New York Times), Sunshine Hillygus (Duke), Terry M. Moe (Stanford), and Paul E. Peterson (Harvard)—will offer a retrospective on how Americans cast their ballots in 2020 and investigate its significance for the nation's political landscape. 

The words the future of conflict triggers shiny images of technology overtaking the battlefield and an extreme revolution in military affairs. But how real is the hype about the disruption to defence and what will this mean for the soldier on the ground? In this panel we bring together three experts to consider the real face of the future of conflict. Flt. Lt. Dr James Kuht, RAF Doctor and Founder of the Reimagining Defence podcast, Lt. Col Al Brown, Chief of the Staff General Scholar and Visiting Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford and Graham Fairclough, former Chief of Staff for the UK's Chief of Defence Intelligence in London and currently Chief of Staff for Rebellion Defence to share their experiences and vision for harnessing the exponential growth in technologies for defence, its potential uses and misuses, and the implications for the battlefield.

Speakers:Brian Klaas is a political scientist at UCL and a weekly columnist for the Washington Post. He has written three books: The Despot's Accomplice (Oxford University Press), The Despot's Apprentice (Hurst & Co), and How to Rig an Election (Yale University Press). His research focuses on democracy, authoritarianism, Trumpism, the nature of power, political violence, and US foreign policy. Before becoming an academic, he co-managed a winning campaign for Governor in his home state of Minnesota.Anne Joseph O'Connell is the Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. She is a lawyer and political scientist whose research and teaching focuses on administrative law and the federal bureaucracy. Outside of the Stanford Law School, she is a contributor to the Center on Regulation and Markets at the Brookings Institution and an appointed senior fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent federal agency dedicated to improving regulatory procedures. She is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Public Administration, and an elected member of the American Law Institute.Colin Provost is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Director of the MSc in Public Policy at UCL. His research focuses primarily on the design and enforcement of regulatory policy in the United States; much of his research has examined how the behaviour of elected prosecutors (state attorneys general) affects the enforcement of state and federal law and how this in turn affects business regulatory compliance. His research has been published in Governance, Journal of Public Policy, Law and Policy, Political Research Quarterly, Political Psychology, Publius: the Journal of Federalism, Regulation and Governance, State Politics and Policy Quarterly and Review of Policy Research.Sherrill Stroschein is a Reader in the Department of Political Science at UCL. Her research examines the politics of ethnicity in democratic and democratising states, especially democratic processes in states with mixed ethnic or religious populations. She has published articles in Perspectives on Politics, Party Politics, Nations and Nationalism, Political Science Quarterly, Europe-Asia Studies, and Ethnopolitics, as well as other journals. Her current project is funded by the ISRF, on local politics in ethnic enclaves.Moderator: Adam Smith, Director of Oxford's Rothermere American Institute (RAI)

To discuss this we have four experts who have all been involved in writing and thinking about this: Prof Jonathan Boston from New Zealand had a Fulbright Fellowship to do comparative research on Governing for the Future; Jaakko Kuosmanen (Finnish Academy) is an expert on the human rights of future generations, and member of the Finnish Government's Foresight Group; Jill Rutter is an experienced former senior civil servant, having worked in HM Treasury, No 10 and Defra; and Professor Ian Goldin is a former Vice-President of the World Bank, and Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technological and Economic Change.

Vernon Bogdanor Research Professor at King's College, London, Gresham Professor of Law, and Fellow of the British AcademyAgata Gostyńska-Jakubowska, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European ReformBaroness (Julie) Smith, Reader in European Politics at Cambridge UniversityChair: Professor Robert Hazell

In July the Intelligence and Security Committee published its long awaited Russia report. To introduce the report, and explain the difficulties which delayed its publication, our first speaker is Dominic Grieve, former Attorney General and chair of the committee when the report was compiled. Then to discuss the threat posed by Russia, and how the West should respond, we have two further experts: Dame Anne Pringle, British Ambassador to Moscow 2008-2011; and Catherine Belton, investigative journalist and author of Putin's People.

Brexit has shaken British politics and raised important questions about how our democracy functions. Philip Rycroft, who was the lead civil servant on constitutional issues within the UK Government from 2012 to 2019, will examine how much Brexit has stressed the democratic process. He will look at trust in the institutions of the state and the state of democratic representation across the UK. He will ask what this means for the future of our democratic institutions and for the future of the United Kingdom itself. About the speaker Philip Rycroft worked in the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) between March 2017 and March 2019, from October 2017 as Permanent Secretary. He was responsible for leading the department in all its work on the Government's preparations for Brexit. From June 2015 to March 2019 he was head of the UK Governance Group in the Cabinet Office, with responsibility for advising ministers on all aspects of the constitution and devolution. From May 2012 to May 2015, he was the Director General in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg. Through his career, Philip worked in a variety roles, in the civil service in Scotland and London, in the European Commission and in business. He is now an academic and independent consultant.

If victors write history, and Bashar al-Assad is consolidating his grip on Syria after nearly a decade of civil war, is there any hope of justice for victims of state-sponsored abuse in Syria? Russia and China have blocked efforts to set up an international tribunal for Syria, so Syrians in exile have been searching for ways to use national laws, and the principle of universal jurisidiction to pursue accountability. Last year Germany arrested two Syrian men and charged them with committing crimes against humanity. When they go on trial this year, it will be the world's first prosecution for state-backed torture in Syria. Activists have also filed cases in Norway, Sweden and Austria, and international groups are stockpiling evidence in the hope of future court cases. But with the top members of Assad's government safely ensconced in Damascus, how much impact can these cases have? About the speaker: Emma Graham-Harrison is senior international affairs correspondent for the Guardian and Observer. She has covered conflicts, political crises, energy and the environment in more than 40 countries across five continents, and was based in China, Afghanistan and Spain for over a decade, before returning to London to take up her current roving role. She graduated from Oxford with a first class degree in Chinese Studies, and speaks Mandarin and Spanish. Awards include Foreign Reporter of the Year at the 2017 British Press Awards; her investigative work on the Cambridge Analytica investigations was also recognised at the British Press Awards and by the London Press Club.

Conservative experts Lord Dunlop and Chris White speak at The Constitution Unit's first seminar of 2020. The Conservatives' 2019 manifesto commits the new government ‘to look at the broader aspects of our constitution: the relationship between the government, parliament and the courts; the functioning of the Royal Prerogative; the role of the House of Lords; and access to justice for ordinary people'. There were also specific commitments: to update the Human Rights Act; to ensure that judicial review is not abused; and to set up a Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission. In this seminar two Conservative experts, Lord (Andrew) Dunlop (member of the House of Lords Constitution Committee and former Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Scotland and Northern Ireland) and Chris White (former Special Adviser to Conservative Cabinet Ministers William Hague, Andrew Lansley and Patrick McLoughlin) will discuss how the new government might implement this agenda, the obstacles it might face, and how they could be overcome. Speakers: Lord Dunlop, Member of the House of Lords Constitution Committee Chris White, former Special Adviser to Conservative Cabinet Ministers Chair: Prof Meg Russell, Director of the Constitution Unit