Research News

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• James Morrison was in conversation with Chris Gilson on the Ballpark Podcast about James's new book on how the gold standard was rooted more in mythology than material reality - listen here.
• Toby Dodge was on BBC World Radio in March 2023 discussing Iraqi politics.
  
• PhD Candidate Mariah Thornton published a strategic update with LSE IDEAS on Taiwan's political warfare system, an institution at the forefront of countering China's interference operations.
  
• Chris Alden has published an article with Dr Bugra Susler. They examine Turkey's relationship with Africa from the point of view of African agency and ask 'How much and what kind of agency can we identify by examining the way in which Turkey approaches African states?'
• Mariia Zolkina, Dinam Research Fellow, presented at the France-Ukraine Forum (Paris) on domestic developments and the mood in Ukrainian society during wartime.
• Lauren Sukin has published an article on cybersecurity, surveillance, and military retaliation. She asks, 'why do some spy balloons burst and others don't', and explains that the difference lies in attribution- read it here.
• Tomila Lankina gave an interview to Sky News for a feature about the five year anniversary of the poisonings of Yulia and Sergei Skripal and tragic death of UK citizen Dawn Sturgess - read about it here.
• Mariia Zolkina, Dinam Research Fellow has published a piece for LSE EUROPP Blogs where she discusses Kyiv's four key principles for securing a lasting peace- read here. Maria has also had other media appearances this week, see here for  more details.
• Karen Smith's interview with Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has been published in the first Women in Diplomacy podcast series - listen to the podcast here.
• William A Callahan is part of a team of scholars who have won a £1.5m grant from the British Academy. They will study the question, 'What do Chinese global orders look like, where are they constituted, and from whose perspective?'.
  
  William also recently published a Strategic Update article with LSE IDEAS, 'China's Global Strategy as Science Fiction'. The article looks at reading Chinese sci-fi as an alternative method of understanding China's global strategy. Read here in full.
• Mariia Zolkina, Dinam Research Fellow, presented her research paper Public resilience as a component of national security: the case of Ukraine (2014-2022) during the international conference Security and Strategic Studies: the State of the Field. See here for Mariia's other research outputs.
• Mathias Koenig-Archibugi has published an article in the British Journal of Political Science and a summary in the blog in Think Global Health, on how government harassment of international NGOs damages global health. Read here.
• Maria Zolkina, Dinam Fellow, has published an article for the Atlantic Council explaining how public opinion within Ukraine has been consolidated around rejection of any territorial concessions to Russia. Read here. Maria has also contributed to international media outlets this week, see here for more details.
• Natalya Naqvi has published an article in the Journal of Politics. In it she discusses how indexes restructured the political economy of sovereign bond markets. Read in full.
• On a panel at the Network of European Regions Using Space Technologies (NEREUS), Dimitrios Stroikos offered his perspective on the synergies between security/defence and space in Europe. View here.
• Lauren Sukin has a new journal article out at the Journal of Conflict Resolution. Lauren discusses how militaries and other non-state actors alike regularly run covert operations - such as the recent Chinese spy balloon. She asks how does covertness influence the likelihood of retaliation. View here.
• Alvaro Mendez and Chris Alden have co-authored a book titled China and Latin America: Development, Agency and Geopolitics, which looks at the interests, strategies and practices of China's incoming power in Latin America. View here.
• DINAM Fellow Mariia Zolkina was a speaker at a public discussion on Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic Aspirations in the Context of Russian Aggression. She presented on Ukraine’s and Russia’s plans and main military developments, and the needs and challenges of Ukraine’s capabilities for a counteroffensive. View here.
• In an interview with E-International Relations, Katharine Millar discusses her new book Support the Troops: Military Obligation, Gender, and the Making of Political Community. Read in full.
• Congratulations to Lauren Sukin who has received an LSE Urgency Grant. Her project examines global attitudes about nuclear energy in response to ongoing Russian actions in Zaporizhzhia.
  
  Lauren has also published two new op-eds. With Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Lauren discusses nuclear populism. Read in full.
  
  In her publication with Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists she looks at how a growing interest in nuclear weapons in Seoul has been enabled by a tense international security environment. Read in full.
• Mariia Zolkina, Dinam Fellow, was among three prominent Ukrainian experts to present on military and political developments in Ukraine in a closed-door brainstorming with Romanian experts at New Strategy Center (Bucharest). View here. Take a look at Mariia's other media engagements this week here.
• Toby Dodge was quoted in an article in the Irish Times. He commented on Iran's power within Iraq, highlighting Iran's influence as being one that 'ebbs and flows'. Read in full.
• In a recent publication in the Global Studies Quarterly, Visiting Professor Giorgio Shani, reflects on the political writings and complex legacy of the Bengali Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, illustrating how Tagore's critique of the nation, unlocks the potential of 'Asia as method'. Read in full.
  
  Giorgio Shani also published an article in the LSE Religion and Global Society interdisciplinary blog. The piece challenges modern assumptions about nationalism and statehood, and provides an outline of his research on Sikh nationalism around the world, looking at cultural identities in the diaspora and the ‘nation’. Read in full.
• DINAM Fellow Mariia Zolkina gave an interview to the main French international TV-channel France24. Mariia discusses the heavy weapons supply to Ukraine, including the first battle tanks from UK which represents a significant decision both diplomatically and militarily. Watch the interview.
• Emeritus Professor and Founding Director of LSE IDEAS, Michael Cox, is the editor of a new a book in the LSE Press titled ‘Afghanistan: Long War, Forgotten Peace'. Access the book.
• PhD Candidate, Chris Deacon, published an article in the European Journal of International Relations which develops the theorising of 'perpetual ontological crisis' in the context of South Korea's persistently antagonistic relationship with Japan in the enduring crisis of Korean division. Read in full.
  
  Also read Chris Deacon’s article in 9DASHLINE which looks at Japanese memory politics in the post-Abe era.
• In a new chapter, titled ‘The Market in Global International Society: A Dialectic of Contestation and Resilience’, Robert Falkner and Emeritus Professor Barry Buzan give an overview of how the market became a primary institution of global international society during the 19th century, and they analyse how its standing in that role has since fared.
  
  On 15 December 2022, Robert Falkner featured as a keynote speaker at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs’ (NUPI) event  ‘After COP27, in what direction does climate cooperation go?’ in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. Find out more about the event.
• Lukas Fiala, PhD Candidate and Project Coordinator of China Foresight, LSEIDEAS, was quoted in a South China Morning Post article. Lukas comments on China’s pledge to support reconstruction efforts in war-torn Ethiopia as a move to ‘lay the foundation’ for future engagement with African counterparts and reflects ‘heightened diplomatic outreach’.
• Emeritus Professor Chris Hughes published a co-edited book with Professor Hatsue Shinohara (Waseda University, Japan). The book titled 'East Asians in the League of Nations', relies on extensive East Asian language sources as well as Japanese scholars and seeks to challenge Eurocentric narratives of global politics.
• PhD candidate, Lanabi la Lova, published an article in Post- Soviet Affairs. The article systematically analyses and discusses the approaches employed in Russian studies and proposes ways of addressing the new realities of diminished access to data and fieldwork. Read in full.
• Katharine Millar’s book ‘Support the Troops: Military Obligation, Gender, and the Making of Political Community’ is now available to order in the UK from the Oxford University Press. Access the book.
• Rohan Mukherjee has a chapter titled ‘Building Foreign Relations for Great Power Capabilities’ in the new edited volume ‘Grasping Greatness: Making India a Leading Power’. Follow the link to the volume.
  
  Rohan Mukherjee’s book ‘Ascending Order’, was featured in the 2022 Holiday Reading List of War on the Rocks. You can also read G. John Ikenberry's review of the book in Foreign Affairs.
• Dinam Fellow, Mariia Zolkina, presented at 26th Ukraine Breakfast Debate dedicated to "Resilience of Democracy in Ukraine under the conditions of War".
  
  Mariia Zolkina also participated in "The Debate" on France 24’s main international news channel. During the programme, Mariia was interviewed about needs of Ukraine for repairing the electricity grid, support for Ukraine during winter period, and step towards its long-term reconstruction. Watch the full interview. See more of Mariia’s events and media engagements over the Christmas break and in January on the Russian war in Ukraine.
• Martin Bayly was asked by the British International Studies Association (BISA) to provide a short video on his recent Review of International Studies article. The journal article explores the value of global intellectual history as a means of understanding patterns of hierarchy and empire that were sometimes present in late-colonial Indian international thought. Watch the video.
• PhD candidate Lukas Fiala published an LSE IDEAS article and argues that China's Global Security Initiative is more a rhetorical concept than a solid blueprint for implementing a China-led order. Read in full.
• PhD candidate Mariah Thornton published an LSE IDEAS article on Taiwan. Mariah argues that despite significant losses for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, the country’s recent local election results do not necessarily signify major changes in the self-governing island's relationship with China. Read in full.
• Emeritus Professor Chris Hughes co-authored a paper with academics from other UK higher education (HE) institutions. The paper provides a model code of conduct for the protection of academic freedom and the academic community in a context of growing internationalisation of the UK HE sector. Read the paper.
• In a recent publication in the Comparative Political Studies journal, Dr Anna Getmansky and co-author Dr Chagai Weiss (Stanford University) show that war-time military service can effect partisan preferences and reduce support for incumbents well after the war ends. Read in full. The article is part of a wider project on war and political support for leaders.
• Jürgen Haacke gave evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee. The oral evidence was given in connection with the Committee’s inquiry: Implementing the Integrated Review: Tilt to the Indo-Pacific.
• Dimitrios Stroikos was quoted in a Euronews article on the International Space Station (ISS). Dr Stroikos commented on competition and cooperation in space between the US, China and Russia. Read the article.
• Mariia Zolkina, LSE Dinam Fellow, gave an interview to a prominent Ukraine news channel TSN on Russia’s energy terror in Ukraine, and strategy of both Russia and Ukraine with its allies to respond to that. Watch the interview (35 mins).
  
  She also gave an interview to Ukraine Youtube-TV channel Ukrlife.TV, on negotiations about the grain deal (Black Sea Initiative), possible resumption of ammonia transit from Russia via Ukrainian pipeline and diplomatic challenges for Western allies of Ukraine at the current stage of Russo-Ukrainian war. Watch the interview (53 mins).
• Lauren Sukin published an op-ed on North Korea’s missile testing with The Sejong Institute. Dr Sukin highlights that North Korea has tested more missiles this year than it has in the past five years combined and explains why this is the case. Read the article.
• Peter Trubowitz featured featured on BBC World News on US voters’ concerns following the midterm elections. Watch the BBC snippet.
• Rohan Mukherjee features in the November 2022 edition of LSE's Research for the World magazine. In 'Rising powers and their desire for status' he puts forward a new theory suggesting rising powers will often make material sacrifices to attain status on the international stage. However, if not treated equally, they will challenge this very order.
  
  His book Ascending order: Rising powers and the politics of status international relations has been reviewed in the journal Small States & Territories, Vol 5, No 2, November 2022. Read the review here.
  
  He also joined Milan Vaichnav's podcast to talk about great power politics and why some rising nations challenge the international order. The duo also discuss China's surprisingly cooperative behavior and India's own grievances with the liberal international order. Listen to the podcast.
• Natalya Naqvi has jointly edited a special issue of Politics and Society,Volume 50, Issue 4, December 2022 entitled 'The Structural Power of Finance Meets Financialization'. Read the journal here.
• Robert Falkner was quoted in a BBC article on COP27 and commented on leadership during the global energy crisis -read more of the article feature.
  
  He was also quoted in a Business Weekly article following last month’s COP27 and comments on the actions global leaders have taken on climate change this year.
• Katharine Millar's book Support the Troops: Military Obligation, Gender, and the Making of Political Community is out in in Canada and the US. Dr Millar's book is also available on the Oxford University Press website.
• Mathias Koenig-Archibugi co-authored an article in the Washington Post. Within the piece Dr Koenig-Archibugi and his authors illuminate their survey research and argue that global citizens want a 'stronger and more democratic United Nations'.
  
  He also co-authored a paper in the European Journal of International Relations titled 'Do international parliaments matter? An empirical analysis of influences on foreign policy and civil rights'. Access the full paper.
• Lauren Sukin and co-author Dr J. Luis Rodriguez (University of Stanford) published an article highlighting how Russian actions at Zaporizhzhia shows the need for international law to provide better legal protections of nuclear installations.
• William A Callahan authored an LSE IDEAS blog titled Geopolitical Geometries in China-Russia Relations which examines China-Russia relations through the lens of geopolitical geometries, analysing both current and historic ‘strategic triangles' and 'concentric circles' models.
  
  He was also quoted in an Associated Press article. In the piece, he highlights that with growing global security tensions, Beijing wants to position China as a world leader in hard politics, creating a “China-centred security system".
• PhD Candidate Mariah Thornton published an article in The Diplomat which explored the implications of China’s 20th National Congress. The piece examines how a new amendment to the CCP constitution demonstrates a significant escalation in the party’s approach to Taiwan.
  
  Italian news outlet Formiche republished her LSE IDEAS blog piece which is titled "National Security Bill: Newcounter-interference legislation shows UK has more to learn from Australia and Taiwan”. See the Formiche publication (in Italian).
• Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellow, Katerina Dalacoura, travelled to Edinburgh to give a lecture on her Leverhulme research project. The project focuses on Turkish Islamist thought about international relations and queries ‘Western’ & ‘non-Western’ in the context of global IR. 
• Kira Huju was quoted in the South China Morning Post article commenting on the UK/India relations. Dr Huju highlighted how the separation between domestic and global politics was getting “impossible to sustain” and that India’s growing might was bringing out a subliminal anxiety that underlies the ‘Global Britain’ narrative.
• Lukas Fiala, PhD Candidate and China Foresight Project Coordinator, featured in a Chemistry World article which examined the scientific collaboration between China and the West and the increasing stand-off between them. Read the article.
• Rohan Mukherjee featured in the TVO Today’s ‘The Agenda’ show. The show’s focus was India-Pakistan relations 75 years after Partition and covered the causes of Partition, its effects on India-Pakistan relations, and the potential for sports such as cricket to bridge the bilateral divide. See part of the discussion.
• Dimitrios Stroikos was interviewed by AL24news. He was asked about the return of great power competition in space, the militarisation of space, space debris, and other important aspects of the global politics of space. Watch the interview (in Arabic).
  
  Read his latest publication International Relations and Outer Space for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies which is the first systematic attempt to outline the emerging and vibrant multidisciplinary subfield. 
• Sinja Graf's book The Humanity of Universal Crime (OUP) earned the 2022 Political Theory Best Book Award from the European Consortium for Political Research
• Elisa Gambino has co-authored a paper with Dr Ricardo Reboredo (Metropolitan University Prague) in Area Development and Policy journal. The new paper titled, Connectivity and competition: the emerging geographies of Africa’s ‘Ports Race’, critically analyses one of the most significant trends currently in progress throughout Africa: the massive increase in port infrastructure investment that the authors term the ‘Ports Race’.
• Lauren Sukin has co-authored a chapter in a new edited volume Is the International Legal Order Unravelling? edited David Sloss (Oxford University Press, 2022). The chapter is “War and Words: The International Use of Force in the UN Charter Era," with Allen Weiner.
• Natalya Naqvi has published a new article in European Journal of International Relations in August 2022. Read it here: Economic crisis, global financial cycles and state control of finance: public development banking in Brazil and South Africa
  
  She has also published another article in Politics and Society entitled Introduction: The Structural Power of Finance Meets Financialization.
• Dimitrios Stroikos has published a short essay for the think tank China Observers in Central and Eastern Europe (CHOICE) that deals with the current state of China-Greece relations. Read ‘China-Greece Relations at 50: A Not So Happy Anniversary?’ 
• Mathias Koenig-Archibugi has been awarded an ESRC Standard Grant for an interdisciplinary research project on The Global Governance of Antimicrobial Resistance: An Empirical Analysis of Participation and Effectiveness.
• The International Studies Quarterly has published three articles by Mathias Koenig-Archibugi in Volume 66 (2022): ‘The Social Construction of Global Health Priorities: An Empirical Analysis of Contagion in Bilateral Health Aid’, ‘Public Opinion on Institutional Designs for the United Nations: An International Survey Experiment’, and ‘Has Global Trade Competition Really Led to a Race to the Bottom in Labor Standards?’ (all Open Access).
• Dimitrios Stroikos' latest chapter is included in Tonny Brems Knudsen and Cornelia Navari (eds), Power Transition in the Anarchical Society: Rising Powers, Institutional Change and the New World Order (Palgrave 2022). Read Power Transition, Rising China, and the Regime for Outer Space in a US-Hegemonic Space Order.
• PhD candidate Stephen Paduano has published a new article in Foreign Policy which reflects on how the G-7's new $600 billion clean energy infrastructure can be improved to compete with China's Belt & Road Initiative and accelerate the global clean energy transition. Read The G-7 Infrastructure Plan Won’t Succeed Unless It Learns from Past Failures
• Ellen Alexandra Holtmaat has co-published an article for the journal Plos One on the impact of the Deepwater Horizon accident on BP's reputation and stock market returns.
• Congratulations to IR Fellow Seebal Aboudounya who has been awarded a prestigious African Women Award for being a 'She Achiever in International Relations'.
  
  The award is for her achievements in International Relations, and specifically for being ‘an outstanding African Woman Achiever in International Relations’.
• In a recent publication for The Review of International Organizations, IR Fellow, Ben Cormier argues that less transparent governments contract more Chinese finance, for both supply and demand side reasons. Read Chinese or western finance? Transparency, official credit flows, and the international political economy of development
• Congratulations to Sinja Graf whose book, The Humanity of Universal Crime (OUP, 2021), earned Honourable Mention for the 2022 Robert L. Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder Best Book Award on International History and Politics from the American Political Science Association.
• Tomila Lankina has published an analysis in The Washington Post on how the social divisions of Russia's imperial age still hamper opposition today. Read Putin's iron grip on Russia is a legacy of empire.
• Dimitrios Stroikos featured in Newsweek commenting on a Chinese study which called for the development of methods to destroy Starlink satellites. 
• PhD Candidate Bruno Binetti and co-author Michael Shifter’s recent article,  published in Foreign Affairs, examines the changing relationship between the US and Latin America, analysing how Washington can reset relations with a region that needs it less. Read: A Policy for a Post-American Latin America. 
• Fawaz Gerges appeared as a guest last week on CNN International Europe discussing ongoing US-Saudi Arabia relations and the planned meeting between President Joe Biden and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince.
• PhD candidate Anne Della Guardia, and Milli Lake, have co-authored an article in World Development. Read Selective inclusion in cash transfer programs: unintended consequences for social cohesion.
• Milli Lake has co-authored an article for the Political Science and Politics journal. Read Field Experiments on Gender: where the personal and political collide.
• PhD candidate Asha Herten-Crabb, together with Dr Clare Wenham, has published a paper on women’s experiences in the UK during the first two waves of COVID. Read “I Was Facilitating Everybody Else’s Life. And Mine Had Just Ground to a Halt”: The COVID-19 Pandemic and its Impact on Women in the United Kingdom in Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society.
• PhD candidate Enrike van Wingerden has published an article which provides a modest critique of positionality, theorising how we come to know things through our bodies and how knowledge is therefore always partly beyond our control. Read Unmastering Research: Positionality and Intercorporeal Vulnerability in International Studies in International Political Sociology.
• PhD candidate Samuel Dixon has published an essay which asks why IR historians have overlooked the late twentieth century and makes a case for the period's relevancy. Read Why studying the late twentieth century is crucial for understanding IR today on the BISA website.
• Dimitrios Stroikos has published an article on Sino-Greek relations which argues that while China has achieved some limited political gains, the relationship remains mainly economics-driven while Greece strengthens strategic ties with traditional allies. Read ‘Head of the Dragon’ or ‘Trojan Horse’?: Reassessing China–Greece Relations in Journal of Contemporary China. 
• A new article by Elisa Gambino explores various spheres of African state agency in China-Africa engagement & how these shape infrastructure projects with Chinese participation. Read Infrastructure and the Politics of African State Agency: Shaping the Belt and Road Initiative in East Africa in Chinese Political Science Review. 

• Congratulations to Robert Falkner whose book Environmentalism and Global International Society (CUP) has been shortlisted for the British International Studies Association Susan Strange Best Book Award 2022.

  The Susan Strange Best Book Prize is awarded for an outstanding book published in any field of International Studies. The aim of the Prize is to honour the work of Susan Strange and to recognise outstanding current work being conducted in the discipline.

  The winner will be announced at the BISA annual conference in June.

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