Research News

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• Nikhil Kalyanpur has published an article in the Review of International Political Economy. Read An illiberal economic order: commitment mechanisms become tools of authoritarian coercion.
• Three of our PhD students Shruti Balaji, Tarsis Brito and Olivia Nantermoz have published an article in the Millennium journal conference Special Issue Vol 51, Issue 1, entitled (Re)Writing the International: Interrogating Histories, Imagining Futurities.
• Ida Roland Birkvad has published a new blog post entitled 'Romancing the River' in the blog The Disorder of Things.
• Theresa Squatrito has co-authored two articles published recently. The first is "When are International Organizations Responsive to Policy Problems?" in International Studies Quarterly, and second is "Introducing the Intergovernmental Policy Output Dataset (IPOD)" in the Review of International Organizations.
  
• Lauren Sukin, Rohan Mukerjee, and Matthew Jones (of the Department of International History at LSE) have been awarded a Small Conference Grant by the Phelan US Centre to host a conference on “U.S. Nuclear Strategy in a Changing Indo-Pacific” in the summer of 2024.
• Milli Lake has been selected to take part in CIVICA Faculty short visits.
• LSE Fellow Ida Roland Birkvad has a new article published with Alexander Stoffel 'Abstractions in International Relations: on the mystification of trans, queer, and subaltern life in critical knowledge production'. They argue that critical scholarship fetishises marginalised groups, mystifying the social relations that shape the material conditions of their lives, histories, and politics.
• PhD Candidate Jo Bluen has published a new article 'The Geopolitics of Race, Empire, and Expertise at the ICC' co- authored with Oumar Bâ and Owiso Owiso. This critical reading examines the problematic dispositions of international criminal law and the current international justice ecosystem.
• Nikhil Kalyanpur was quoted in Le Monde for the article 'Why is the UK at the forefront of providing military aid to Ukraine'.
• Tomila Lankina's book The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia: From Imperial Bourgeoisie to Post-Communist Middle Class has won the J. David Greenstone Prize for the best book in the Politics and History section of the American Political Science Association.
  
  Tomila's book also received “Honorable Mention” for the Sartori Book Award of the American Political Science Association Organized Section for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research. The Giovanni Sartori Book Award honours Giovanni Sartori's work on qualitative methods and concept formation.
• Katharine Millar has been awarded the Canadian Political Science Association 2023 Prize for best book in International Relations for her new book Support the Troops: Military Obligation, Gender and Political Community.
• DINAM Fellow Mariia Zolkina spoke at the "Strategic Communications in the Fight Against Misinformation" event, organized by NATO, the Head of the Cross-Party Parliamentary Group in Support of Ukraine, and Atticus Partners. The event took place at the House of Commons and focused on strategic communications as a tool to combat Russian disinformation. During the event, Mariia shared her expertise on dispelling myths surrounding Donbas and Crimea, and provided insights on effective methods to combat such misinformation.
• PhD Candidate Tarsis Daylan Brito has published an open- access journal article '(Dis)possessive Borders, (Dis)possessed Bodies: Race and Property at the Postcolonial European Borders' in International Political Sociology. Tarsis looks at the techniques of dispossession at European borders against Global South migrants by police and border authorities. The article argues that these practices at Europe's borders are not simply another method of governance, rather, dispossession here is seen as central to the very (post)colonial functioning of the border.
• Rohan Mukerjee's essay was published recently. It argues that the ongoing contestation between the United States and China fits a broader historical pattern of status politics between rising powers and established powers in international orders, and touches on some ways in which institutional reforms might mitigate bilateral frictions in US-China relations. Read it in Foreign Affairs.
  
  He was also part of a group of experts surveyed by Foreign Affairs on whether the world is closer today to being unipolar than it is to being bipolar or multipolar. Read here for Rohan’s comments and other responses: ‘Did the Unipolar Moment Ever End? Foreign Affairs Asks the Experts’.
• Milli Lake has published an introductory essay with Marie Berry in the Journal of Genocide Research, as part of a special forum highlighting research from the Women’s Rights After War Project (WRAW). The Forum presents five articles that seek to foster interdisciplinarity and to disrupt hierarchical relationships in research design and implementation.
• Milli Lake, together with collaborators Marie Berry, Soraya Zarook and Sinduja Raja, have launched a Digital Archive as part of the Women’s Rights After War (WRAW) Project.
• Tomila Lankina was interviewed for the BBC Briefing Podcast on 'Ukraine: Is it all about to change?'. The discussion centred on the implications of recent movements by Ukraine and Russia's military forces - listen here.
• Dimitrios Stroikos was interviewed by Al Jazeera English. He discussed the second mission of China's reusable spaceplane that landed after 276 days in orbit - watch here.
• Fawaz Gerges had a wide-ranging conversation with Fareed Zakaria on CNN about the shifting geo-political landscape in the Middle East - watch here.
• Dinam Fellow Mariia Zolkina was a keynote speaker on UK and EU common support to Ukraine at the European Parliament at the Delegation of EU – UK interparliamentary assembly.
  
  Mariia was also a speaker at the public discussion "Critical Assessment of the Lessons Learned from the war in Ukraine", organised by New Eastern Europe, the Faculty of International and Political Studies at the Jagiellonian University and LSE IDEAS CSEEP in Krakov, Poland and also participated in a closed door seminar for the development of recommendations ahead of the NATO Vilnius Summit.
• Peter Trubowitz and Brian Burgoon have published an article  on making the center vital again. They discuss how to turn back the populist tide and build support for the liberal order.
• Rohan Mukherjee's book Ascending Order: Rising Powers and the Politics of Status in International Institutions was reviewed in the journals International Affairs and Ethics and International Affairs. The authors highlight Mukerjee's bringing to the fore of the rising powers’ interpretation of world politics and how his book offers new research tools for political scientists interested in deconstructing international power relations. 
• Katharine Millar's book Support the Troops: Military Obligation, Gender, and the Making of Political Community has been shortlisted for the 2023 Canadian Political Science Association's Prize for Best Book in International Relations, and the British International Studies Association's L.H.M Ling Outstanding Best First Book Prize.
• PhD candidate Shruti Balaji has published a new article on Indian social activist, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay’s international thought making the case for social work as an imperial site of world making.
• LSE Fellow Kira Huju recently interviewed for Le Figaro for a piece on Indian foreign policy and diplomacy. Kira spoke about the impact of Hindu nationalism on Indian foreign policy in the shadow of the war in Ukraine (French).
• LSE Dinam Fellow Mariia Zolkina argues in her new article on Ukraine, that there can be no lasting peace with Russia until Ukraine liberates Crimea. View Mariia's other media engagements and publications.
• Marta Soprana has been awarded an LSE Research Support Fund award for her research project ‘International Trade Agreements as a Vehicle for AI governance? Lessons from Singapore’.
• Lauren Sukin has been awarded an LSE Research Support Fund award for her research project 'How Credible Nuclear Security Guarantees Can Backfire'.
• 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.

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