Voices: The EISA Podcast

What is China's role in the global economy, and how should we understand its growing power in a world of shifting financial hierarchies and intensifying geo-economic competition? In this episode, we are joined by Johannes Petry to explore China's expanding economic influence and what it means for the global financial system, the institutions that govern it, and the future of global order itself. Johannes Petry is Senior Researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt and Principal Investigator of the DFG-funded research project “Financial Empire” which examines China’s growing global financial footprint in a world of growing geo-economic contestations as part of a larger process of empire building. Petry's research agenda brings together three interlinked themes: the development and internationalisation of China’s financial system, the role of infrastructures in the politics of global finance, and the broader post-crisis transformation of the global economic order. He is co-author of BRICS and the Global Financial Order: Liberalism Contested?, which he published with Andreas Nölke at Cambridge University Press in 2024, and his work has been published in leading journals, including Review of International Political Economy, European Journal of International Relations, and New Political Economy, among others.

Dr. Johannes Petry

Petry, J. (2025). Wall Street in China: the malleability of global finance in the age of geopolitics. Review of International Political Economy, 32(4), 970–1001.

Petry, J. (2025). China’s quest for pricing power: Financial hierarchy, autonomy and commodity futures markets. International Affairs, 101 (5), 1747–1768.

Petry, J. & A. Nölke (eds.) (2025). State, capitalism and finance in emerging markets: Between subordination and statecraft. Bristol: Bristol University Press.

Pape, F., J. Petry & L. Rethel (2025) Special Section: How does the rise of Asia reshape international financial affairs? International Affairs, 101 (5).

Petry, J. & A. Nölke (2024). BRICS and the global financial order: Liberalism contested? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Petry, J. (2023) Beyond ports, roads and railways: Chinese economic statecraft, the Belt and Road Initiative and the politics of financial infrastructures, European Journal of International Relations, 29(2): 319-351.

Pape, F. & J. Petry (2023) East Asia and the politics of global finance: a developmental challenge to the neoliberal consensus? Review of International Political Economy, 31(1), 224-252.

As artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly moves onto the battlefield, the nature of war itself is being transformed. How are automated systems reshaping the conduct of war, and what happens when decision-making is partially or fully delegated to machines? To explore the role of automation in contemporary warfare and the ethical questions raised by the increasing use of AI in military contexts, we are joined by Elke Schwarz, Professor of Political Theory at Queen Mary University of London. Her work sits at the intersection of ethics, technology, politics, and warfare, with a particular focus on emerging military technologies such as AI, autonomous weapon systems, drones, and robotics. She is the author of Death Machines: The Ethics of Violent Technologies (Manchester University Press), and her research on military AI and autonomous systems has been widely published in leading international journals and outlets. She also serves as Vice-Chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, is an Associate of the Imperial War Museum, and a Royal Society of Arts Fellow.

Professor Elke Schwarz, Profile

Schwarz, E. (2018). Death machines. The ethics of violent technologies. Manchester University Press.

Schwarz, E. (2025). "Engineering Moral Failure? The Challenges of Algorithmic Ethics for Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems". In The Realities of Autonomous Weapons. Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press. Retrieved Jun 7, 2026, from https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529237191.ch013

Schwarz E. (2025). From blitzkrieg to blitzscaling: Assessing the impact of venture capital dynamics on military norms. Finance and Society. Published online 2025:1-24. doi:10.1017/fas.2024.18

Schwarz, E. (2025) ‘The Hacker Way: Moral Decision Logics with Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems’. In: Glaser, H., & Wong, P. (Eds.). (2025). Governing the Future: Digitalization, Artificial Intelligence, Dataism (1st ed.). CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003226406

Schwarz, E. (2024). Trolleyology: Algorithmic Ethics for Killer Robots. In: Handbook on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781803926728.00011

Schwarz, E. (2024). Moral maze: ethics for cyber weapon systems. In: Stevens, T. and Devanny, J. (2024). Research Handbook on Cyberwarfare. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781803924854.00030

Renic N. & Schwarz E. (2023). Crimes of Dispassion: Autonomous Weapons and the Moral Challenge of Systematic Killing. Ethics & International Affairs. 37(3):321-343. doi:10.1017/S0892679423000291

Schwarz, E. (2021). Autonomous Weapons Systems, Artificial Intelligence, and the Problem of Meaningful Human Control. Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence. https://doi.org/10.22618/TP.PJCV.20215.1.139004

In this episode, we tackle a question that cuts to the heart of today’s global power struggles: Why is the Gulf so geopolitically important? To unpack this question, we are joined by Laleh Khalili, Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter. In conversation with host Polly Pallister-Wilkins she discusses the escalating tensions surrounding the US and Israeli war on Iran, the strategic implications of a potential closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and the wider risks of oil price shocks and global economic disruption. Moving beyond headline geopolitics, the conversation situates these developments within broader histories of empire, extraction, and capitalist accumulation. Laleh Khalili explains how the Gulf has been shaped by long-standing imperial entanglements and what this means for how we should understand its international relations and political economy today. Laleh Khalili’s work has been central to analysing the infrastructures and logics of contemporary capitalism and war. Amongst other works, she is the author of Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula and Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy.

Prof. Laleh Khalili

Khalili, L. (2018). The infrastructural power of the military: The geoeconomic role of the US Army Corps of Engineers in the Arabian Peninsula. European Journal of International Relations, 24(4), 911–933.

Khalili, L. (2025). Extractive capitalism: How commodities and cronyism drive the global economy. Profile Books.

Khalili, L. (2024). The corporeal life of seafaring. Mack Books.

Khalili, L. (2020). Sinews of war and trade: Shipping and capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula. Verso.

What happens to the global financial order when the world starts losing faith in the US dollar - and in the United States itself? In this episode, host Polly Pallister-Wilkins speaks with Tobias Pforr (University of Copenhagen) and Fabian Pape (University of Edinburgh) about how the Second Trump administration is undermining the dollar’s hegemony. Tobias Pforr is a political economist and Postdoctoral Researcher at the Employment Relations Research Centre in the Department of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen. His research bridges political economy, philosophy, and public policy, and he has held positions at the European University Institute, the University of Reading, and the University of Warwick. Fabian Pape is a political economist and Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, researching the US Treasury market as a source of geopolitical and financial power. Drawing on their recent article, co-authored with Johannes Petry, Senior Researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt, “Dollar Diminished: The Unmaking of US Financial Hegemony Under Trump” (2025), they discuss how eroding trust in US leadership threatens the dollar’s dominance as a trade, reserve, and investment currency, what this means for the liberal international order, and why this moment differs from past crises. The conversation also touches on what an “interregnum” in global finance might look like, and the implications for Europe and global stability.

Pforr T, Pape F, Petry J. Dollar Diminished: The Unmaking of US Financial Hegemony Under Trump. International Organization. 2025;79(S1):S117-S133. doi:10.1017/S0020818325101033

Pape, F, Petry, J., Rethel. L. 2025. How does the rise of Asia reshape international financial affairs? International Affairs, 101 (5): 1553–1565

Murau, S, Pape, F, Pforr, T. 2022. International Monetary Hierarchy through Emergency US-Dollar Liquidity: A Key Currency Approach. Competition and Change 27 (3–4):495– 515.

Murau, S, Pforr, T. 2020. What Is Money in a Critical Macro-Finance Framework? Finance and Society 6 (1):56–66.

Pape, F. 2022. Governing Global Liquidity: Federal Reserve Swap Lines and the International Dimension of US Monetary Policy. New Political Economy 27 (3):455–72.

Petry, J. 2025. China’s Quest for Pricing Power: Financial Hierarchy, Autonomy and Commodity Futures Markets. International Affairs 101 (5):1343–60.

Petry, J. 2025. Wall Street in China: the malleability of global finance in the age of geopolitics, Review of International Political Economy, 32(4), pp. 970–1001

Pforr, T., Pape, F., & Murau, S. (2022). After the Allocation: What Role for the Special Drawing Rights System? Institute for New Economic Thinking . Working Paper No. 180

Tuckett D, Pforr T, Johnson S. (forthcoming) Conviction narrative theory and cognitive economics: the case of public debt analysis. In Boue, C. (ed) The Palgrave Handbook on Public Debt & Policy Mix. London: Palgrave MacMillan

Why has Denmark - once known for its humanitarian ideals - become so unwelcoming to refugees? In this episode, Michelle Pace, Associate Fellow at Chatham House, joins us to discuss her new book "Un-Welcome in Denmark: The Paradigm Shift and Refugee Integration" (Manchester University Press, 2025), co-authored with Sarah El‑Abd. A leading voice on Europe-Middle East relations, migration, and democratization, Pace has published widely in journals such as Mediterranean Politics, Journal of Common Market Studies, and Third World Quarterly. Her books include Knowledge Production in Higher Education (MUP, 2023), The Routledge Handbook of EU–Middle East Relations (2021), and Syrian Refugee Children in the Middle East and Europe (2018). In conversation with Polly Pallister-Wilkins, Michelle Pace unpacks how Denmark’s “paradigm shift” in refugee policy reflects deeper European anxieties about belonging, identity, and moral responsibility.

Pace, M. (2025). Un-welcome to Denmark. The paradigm shift and refugee integration. Manchester University Press.

Pace, M., & Völkel, J. C. (Eds.) (2023). Knowledge production in higher education: Between Europe and the Middle East. (1 ed.) Manchester University Press.

Bouris, D., Huber, D., & Pace, M. (Eds.). (2021). Routledge Handbook of EU–Middle East Relations (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429317873

Pace, M., & Sen, S. (2019). The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank: The theatrics of woeful statecraft. Routledge.

Pace, M., & Sen, S. (Eds.). (2018). Syrian refugee children in the Middle East and Europe: Integrating the young and exiled. Routledge.

Pace, M. (2011). Europe, the USA and political Islam: Strategies for engagement. Springer.

Pace, M., & Seeberg, P. (Eds.). (2010). The European Union's Democratization Agenda in the Mediterranean (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315875743

Pace, M., & Schumacher, T. (Eds.). (2007). Conceptualizing Cultural and Social Dialogue in the Euro-Mediterranean Area: A European Perspective (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203826485

Pace, M. (2005). The Politics of Regional Identity: Meddling with the Mediterranean (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203414521

In this episode, we speak with Dr Esther Marijnen, Associate Professor and Political Ecologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Esther’s work explores the uneasy entanglements of nature, military conflict, and authority - from the militarisation of conservation efforts to the ecological and social impacts left by colonial violence. Drawing on over a decade of field research in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and more recent work in Uganda and Europe, Esther introduces her current project Wounded Landscapes funded by the Dutch Research Council. The project examines how slow violence and historical legacies of conflict reconfigure both environments and the communities that inhabit them. In conversation with host Polly Pallister-Wilkins, they discuss how international conservation organisations engage with these “wounded” spaces, and what their interventions reveal about broader understandings of nature, justice, and repair.

Dr Esther Marijnen

Ivan Mugyenzi Ashaba, Esther Marijnen, ‘We are soldiers now’: green militarism and (foreign-assisted) military training in conservation, International Affairs, Volume 101, Issue 2, March 2025, Pages 565–582, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae320

Marijnen, E. (2022). Eco-war tourism: Affective geographies, colonial durabilities and the militarization of conservation. Security Dialogue, 53(6), 550-566. https://doi.org/10.1177/09670106221112215 (Original work published 2022)

Garrett Graddy-Lovelace, Malini Ranganathan (2024): Geopolitical ecology for our times,

Rubaii, Kali (2023). This is why we protect the rivers, this is how we love the rivers. Critical Times, 6(2), 195–218.

Rubaii, K., & Griffiths, M. (2025). Deferral and dispersal: The military violence of post-war clean-up. Human Organization, 84(1), 56–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/00187259.2024.2429998

Baverman, Irus (2023): Settling Nature. The Conservation Regime in Palestine-Israel. Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press.

What is the arms trade, and how does it shape our world? In our first episode of 2026, we explore why scholars of international relations should pay closer attention to the arms trade, and what its dynamics reveal about power, security, and global inequality. Joining us is Professor Anna Stavrianakis (Sussex), leading expert on the international arms trade, UK arms export policy, and militarism in North–South perspective. Anna teaches at the University of Sussex and serves as Director of Research and Strategy at Shadow World Investigations, an organisation that exposes corruption and abuse in the arms industry. She has provided expert evidence to UK parliamentary committees, collaborated with civil society groups such as Campaign Against Arms Trade, Control Arms, and the UK Working Group on Arms, and written extensively on the politics of militarism and the arms trade. In conversation with host Polly Pallister-Wilkins, she tells us how the global arms trade operates, who benefits from it, and how critical scholarship and activism can challenge its political influence.

Prof. Anna Stavrianakis

Air power, controversy and colonial continuities. UK arms sales and the war in Yemen,” Middle East Critique (2025)

The arms trade, war economies and global circuits of violence. In: Aida Hozić and Jacqui True (eds.) War Economy: Gendered Circuits of Violence and Capital (Routledge, 2025)

The arms trade and the transformation of global order: a revitalised research agenda (Global Studies Quarterly, 2025)

When ‘Peace and Security’ Means Arming Genocide (The Political Quarterly, 2025)

The Global Arms Trade: How it Works, and How We Might Control It (2024). In: Michie, Feinstein & Rogers (edts.): Monstrous Anger of the Guns How the Global Arms Trade is Ruining the World and What We Can Do About It. (Pluto Press, 2024)

Controlling weapons circulation in a postcolonial militarised world. (Review of International Studies 2019). 45(1):57-76. doi:10.1017/S0260210518000190

Legitimising liberal militarism: politics, law and war in the Arms Trade Treaty (Third World Quarterly, 2016)

Taking Aim at the Arms Trade: NGOs, Global Civil Society and the World Military Order (Zed Books, 2010)

In this episode, host Polly speaks with Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín (New York University), winner of this year’s EISA Best Dissertation Award for his dissertation Architects of the Better World: Democracy, Law, and the Construction of International Order (1919 - 1998), which he is currently developing into a monograph. Daniel’s research examines how the metaphorical use of architectural language in international law discussions often obscures the real, material spaces where international law is shaped, challenged, and debated. He argues that that the metaphorical language of architecture in international law - epitomised by Truman’s call for “architects of the better world” - conceals the material realities of where international order is produced, and instead traces the emergence of a concrete “international parliamentary complex” that reshaped global governance from 1919 to 1998.

Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín

EISA Best Dissertation Award 2025

Quiroga Villamarín, D. R. (2023). “Suitable Palaces”: Navigating Layers of World Ordering at the Centre William Rappard (1923–2013). Architectural Theory Review, 27(1), 19–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2023.2231574

Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (2020). Beyond Texts? Towards a Material Turn in the Theory and History of International Law. Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit international, 23(3), 466-500. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-12340172

In this special Voices episode, we unpack the recent recognition of Palestinian statehood by several Western governments, including the UK, France, Portugal, Canada, and Australia. The move came shortly after a UN Special Committee report finding Israel’s actions in Gaza consistent with genocide. This historic decision has sparked intense debate about the timing, motivations, and consequences of recognising Palestine as a state. Emile Badarin (University of Oxford) and Victor Kattan (University of Nottingham) join host Polly Pallister-Wilkins to discuss these developments and examine the broader politics and legal aspects of recognition within the long struggle for Palestinian statehood.

Emile Badarin

Victor Kattan

Badarin, E. (2024). Foreign Policy and the Performance of Collective State Recognition Amidst Genocide. Middle East Critique, 33(4), 635–654. https://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2024.2408983

Badarin, E. (2021). Politics of Recognition, Elimination and Settler-Colonialism. Critical Sociology, 49(2), 233-252. https://doi.org/10.1177/08969205211058452 (Original work published 2023)

Emile Badarin, States Recognition in Foreign Policy: The Case of Sweden's Recognition of Palestine, Foreign Policy Analysis, Volume 16, Issue 1, January 2020, Pages 78–97, https://doi.org/10.1093/fpa/ory019

Kattan, V. (2025, July 31). Recognition of a Palestinian state is long overdue — now the West is understanding the urgency. ABC Religion.

Kattan, V. (2019). From Coexistence to Conquest. International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891-1949. Pluto Press.

Kattan, V. (2008). The Palestine Question in International Law. British Institute of International and Comparative Law.

Kattan, V. and Ranjan, A. (2025). The breakup of India and Palestine. The causes and legacies of partition Manchester University Press.

Cuddy, B. and Kattan, V. (2023). Making Endless War: The Vietnam and Arab-Israeli Conflicts in the History of International Law. University of Michigan Press.

Mapping Israeli settlement expansion the West Bank since 1967

West Bank Access Restrictions Map 2025 (including checkpoints, barriers, settlements, and Areas A, B and C)

In this episode, we welcome Alvina Hoffmann (SOAS), winner of EISA’s 2025 Best Article Award from the European Journal of International Relations (EJIR). In her award-winning article “What Makes a Spokesperson? Delegation and Symbolic Power in Crimea” (2024, vol. 30, Issue 1, pp. 27-51), Alvina unpacks questions about who gets to speak for others, exploring themes of symbolic power, authenticity, and the universalism of human rights. In conversation with host Polly Pallister-Wilkins, Alvina draws on her research to explore the struggles and stakes involved in speaking on behalf of others through the lens of human rights politics in Crimea. She also talks us through the dynamics of delegation and representation that shape global diplomacy and shares insights from her ongoing work on elites and human rights in the UN.

Hoffmann, A. (2024). What makes a spokesperson? Delegation and symbolic power in Crimea. European Journal of International Relations, 30(1), 27–51.

Diagne, S. B. (2025). From language to language: The hospitality of translation. Other Press.

Bourdieu, P., Chamboredon, J.-C., & Passeron, J.-C. (1999). The weight of the world: Social suffering in contemporary society. Polity Press.

Butler, J. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519–531.

Adler-Nissen, R. (2014). Symbolic power in European diplomacy: The struggle between national foreign services and the EU's External Action Service. Review of International Studies, 40(4), 657–681.

Hoffmann, A. (2025). The plural professional: How UN human rights experts construct their independence. Review of International Studies, 1–21. https://doi.org/ (if DOI available, add here)

Bigo, D., & McCluskey, E. (2018). What is a PARIS approach to (in) securitization? Political anthropological research for international sociology. [Unpublished manuscript or specify source if published].](https://www.academia.edu/37287040/WhatIsaPARISApproachtoInsecuritizationPoliticalAnthropologicalResearchforInternational_Sociology)**)

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. (n.d.). From economy of occupation to economy of genocide: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.