Politics and International Relations Podcasts

Although the 2003 Iraq War was linked to the "War on Terror" the case for the war was presented, at least in the UK, within the terms of the established framework of international relations, with the UN at the centre. The aftermath of the war pushed the UK into an arena in which terrorist methods were regularly employed and it struggled to cope. The lecture will explore what this might mean for future British interventions.

Geir Lundestad, a Norwegian historian, who until 2014 served as the director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, delivered the 2016 Cyril Foster Lecture, 'Twenty-five Years in the Search for Peace: Reflections on the Nobel Peace Prize', on 3rd March 2016. The Cyril Foster Lecture is the University's principal annual guest lecture in the field of International Relations. It has attracted a most distinguished group of lecturers. The Cyril Foster bequest specifies that the lectures are to deal with the ‘elimination of war and the better understanding of the nations of the world.’

Geir Lundestad was the director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute and the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the Nobel Peace Prize, from 1990 to 2014. In 2015 Geir published a frank account of his 25 Nobel years. The lecture is based on Geir's book, and in particular, discusses what the Nobel Peace Prize can realistically achieve.

Professor Emerita J. Ann Tickner (University of Southern California) delivers a lecture on the role of feminist theory in the field of international relations. Tickner's talk covers the genesis of the feminist approach to IR, which she herself pioneered some 25 years ago. She details how the feminist approach is methodologically distinct as most of IR relies on state-centric approaches while feminist theory is inherently sociological. One of Tickner's examples is the investigation of how gendered reponses to 9/11 caused a return to hypermasculinity in policy. Finally, Tickner makes a case for the continued development of the field as a way to continue legitimizing the explanations of world politics that scholars produce.

The lecture follows from the 2014 publication of Tickner's book, A Feminist Voyage through International Relations, by the Oxford University Press as part of their series Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations. More information about the book can be found here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-feminist-voyage-through-international-relations-9780199951260?cc=gb&lang=en&.

St Antony's College hosts the 2015 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Svetlana Alexievich, for a discussion of her the Soviet soul and her current and former projects. Conducted in Russian and translated by Oxford DPhil student Margarita Vaysman, the discussion captures key insights into Alexievich's writing process, often described as a new genre between journalism and literature for her extensive usage of interviews to craft a global voice. Alexievich explains the pique of her interest for storytelling from a conversation with her grandmother and the methods she uses to approach her subjects as neighbors who form part of the same history of the Soviet experience. Her profound musings on truth, suffering and evil versus good provide a broader context for her works Second-Hand Time (newly translated to English this year) and Chernobyl Prayer as well as many others.

Professor Timothy Garton Ash discusses the premise of his new book titled 'Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World.' Introduced by Warden Margaret MacMillan of St. Antony's, Professor Timothy Garton Ash presents his newest book, 'Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World.' The work is based on the premises that the conditions of free speech are changing given movements of mass migration and the wide dissemination of the Internet, both of which make us all neighbors, both literally and figuratively. Professor Garton Ash organizes his book around what he argues are the ten main dimensions of free speech: lifeblood, violence, knowledge, journalism, diversity, religion, privacy, secrecy, icebergs and courage. Crucially, Professor Garton Ash argues that we must be able to agree on how we disagree and that issues of civility ought not to be mediated by the law.

University scholars Adam Roberts (Balliol), Patricia Thornton (Merton) and Faisal Devji (St. Antony's) address the new publication with contextual information on the cases of India and China as well as a debate on the existence of universal values.

Associated with the book is a website curated by Professor Garton Ash and graduate students of the University featuring information and contributions on the ten principles of free speech in 13 different languages including Turkish, Japanese, Urdu and Arabic. The website is available here: http://freespeechdebate.com.

Félix Krawatzek and Andy Eggers discuss methods to analyse large bodies of text in more systematic and reliable ways.

Félix Krawatzek and Andy Eggers discuss methods to analyse large bodies of text in more systematic and reliable ways.

Félix Krawatzek and Andy Eggers discuss methods to analyse large bodies of text in more systematic and reliable ways.

Félix Krawatzek and Andy Eggers discuss methods to analyse large bodies of text in more systematic and reliable ways.

Professor Todd Hall discussed his recently published book, 'Emotional Diplomacy: Official Emotion on the International Stage.'