Academic Schools and DepartmentsInternational Relations

The Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and The Institute of Middle East, Central Asia and Caucasus Studies welcome Mariam Barghouti is a writer and researcher based in Ramallah.

She also is a policy analyst with the think tank, Al-Shabak and a lecturer at Al-Quds Bard University (AQB). Her political commentary has been featured in The Washington Post, Middle East Eye, Guardian, CNN, BBC, EURONews, Al-Jazeera English, the New York Times amongst others. Her journalistic bylines include in Al-Jazeera English, The Intercept, Middle East Eye, amongst others. She has also lectured in Sociology at the Arab American University of Palestine and currently conducts research and analysis for various organizations in the region with a focus on gender, socio-economic inequalities, and power-relations. She also conducts monitoring and evaluation missions within the humanitarian aid and development sector.

Palestine and Decolonial Movements

This lecture will delve into the exploration of the Palestinian struggle from a decolonial lens in light of the most recent escalation of settler-colonial violence and ethnic cleansing. It seeks to re-locate and centralize decolonialism beyond its academic and activist confines to be more accurately reflective of the Palestinian context. In this way, the lecture seeks to dis-locate the narrative of conflict and conflict resolution to colonialism and decolonial movements.

In democracies where leaders are elected by universal suffrage, leaders’ foreign policy choices should in principle correspond to, or at least be constrained by, the preferences of their electorates. Despite the intuitive appeal of this notion of democratic constraint, however, electorates were long thought of as being too ignorant, apathetic, or consumed by their livelihoods to have a say in foreign policy. In India, high levels of poverty and illiteracy have been blamed for voter apathy towards foreign affairs, exacerbating the insularity of foreign policy from public opinion.

Against the conventional wisdom, however, recent research drawing on in-depth examination of Indian leaders’ foreign policy decisions suggests that this is not always the case. Under certain international and domestic conditions, Indian prime ministers have been found to factor public opinion into their foreign policy decisions. This lecture will draw on the speaker’s recently concluded doctoral research at the India Institute at King’s College London. The lecture will discuss the cognitive roots of democratic constraint and draw on case studies of Indian foreign policy decisions towards the Gulf to identify the domestic and international conditions under which Indian leaders were more likely to respect public preferences. Ultimately, it seeks to inspire aspiring researchers to approach the topic of democratic constraint on foreign policy in new and unconventional ways.

Dr Hasan Alhasan is a Research Fellow for Middle East Policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). He has recently earned a doctorate in International Relations from King’s College London for his research into the cognitive roots of democratic constraint on foreign policy choice in India. Prior to joining King’s, Dr Alhasan served for five years as senior analyst at the Office of the First Deputy Prime Minister of Bahrain. He has earned degrees from Sciences Po Paris and the London School of Economics and is a 2007 recipient of the Crown Prince’s International Scholarship Programme in Bahrain.

Email irevents@st-andrews.ac.uk to attend and be sent the MS Teams link

Email – irevents@st-andrews.ac.uk to register!

The Institute for the Study of War and Strategy (ISWS) seminar series presents Dr Sara Plana postdoctoral fellow at Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania.

How do states control non-state armed groups they sponsor in foreign civil wars (proxies)? The speaker argues that the state sponsor’s goal against the shared enemy with the proxy—specifically, whether it involves defeating the enemy or stopping short of defeat—affects the tools of control states use and how effective they are at achieving proxy compliance. The seminar will test this theory and reveal the various dilemmas facing state sponsors by drawing on nested case studies of three efforts by the US to support non-state armed groups in the proxy war in Syria from 2013 to 2020.

Sara Plana received her PhD from MIT in September 2021 and is a postdoctoral fellow at Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. Her book project examines how states manage non-state armed groups they sponsor in foreign civil wars (proxies) through in-depth, multi-method case studies of state-proxy relationships in the Syrian civil war from 2011 to present. Her broader research agenda investigates the causes, conduct, and consequences of proxy warfare as well as military organizational behavior and civil-military relations. She is a Fellow with the Bridging the Gap Project and a non-resident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She graduated with an A.B. in Government from Harvard University.

The ‘Social Justice’ symposium is coordinated by the St Andrews Global Challenges Forum.

The St Andrews Global Challenges Forum was formed in 2018 and builds on the University’s commitment to the Global Challenges agenda. The forum supports the University’s extensive Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) challenge-led research base, funded by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) GCRF QR Grant and contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Chaired by Professor Thomas Meagher, this symposium is part of symposia webinar series on the overarching theme of ‘Sustainable Futures’ with the cross-cutting impact topics of:

Equality Matters
Sustainable Livelihoods
Social Justice
Evidence-based policy

Our vision for these themed sessions is that each will consist of two to three paired talks from St Andrews researchers and their ODA partners. Followed by a panel presentation and discussion. These topics are applicable to the SFC-funded GCRF projects portfolio as underlying issues are being addressed with more discipline-specific research. We intend that they will form the basis for substantive interdisciplinary discussions.

Find out more about GCRF St Andrews on Facebook or Twitter. For further information, please email RIS_GCRF@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Centre for French History and Culture – Salon Talk
‘Mapping the French Relationship with the Anglo-Saxons in the Twentieth Century’ – presented by Andy Williams (International Relations)