糖心TV

We are delighted to introduce Sara Salem as the new Research and Teaching Fellow in Middle East Politics in PAIS. Sara will be supporting Dr Nicola Pratt’s AHRC-funded project, ‘Politics and Popular Culture in Egypt: Contested Narratives of the 25 January Revolution and its Aftermath’, and teaching a module on Middle East Politics. She will join us in September 2016 from the Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, where she is currently completing her PhD in International Political Economy.

recently appeared on BBC Booktalk, alongside co-author Rory Cormac, talking to Mark D'Arcy about their new book The Black Door: Spies, Secret Intelligence and British Prime Ministers, on the relationships between prime ministers and the intelligence agencies.

has recently given a seminar on "International Migration and the Security Environment" at the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (JRC).

Seminar Abstract:

The recent decades have seen a substantial increase in global migration. This phenomenon critically challenges the territorial state as a bounded entity and it is a key issue on the security agenda of many countries. We explore two consequences of migration on national and international security: terrorism and military intervention. On one hand, migration inflows can lead to the diffusion of policies, ideologies and behavior, including terrorism. Using spatial-econometric analyses, we find that terrorism “at home” increases with a larger number of immigrants from countries with terrorism, suggesting that migrants can be an important vehicle through which terrorism diffuses. Yet, our results also indicate that migrant inflows per se actually lead to a lower level of terrorist attacks. On the other hand, migrants can be a bridge between homeland and hostland and shape foreign policies of the host country. Using a nearly-exhaustive dataset on civil wars and military interventions since 1945, we find that migrants act a conduit for foreign military intervention across country pairs.

Congratulations all of our Undergraduate Research Support Scheme (URSS) winners!

The Undergraduate Research Support Scheme (URSS) is a scheme to provide a bursary and skills development training to support undergraduate students who wish to carry out a summer research project as an addition to a degree course.

PAIS researcher was interviewed live on Sky News on Wednesday 25 May about the European Parliament and the upcoming EU referendum. Related to her PhD research, which considered issues of participation and democracy in the EU, Lucy was invited to discuss the role of the European Parliament in EU democracy and its impact on the UK.

Asked about the idea that the European Parliament imposes laws on the British people, Lucy highlighted that British citizens are represented in the European Parliament by their directly elected MEPs, who have as much influence over decisions made in the Parliament as MEPs from any other EU member state. She added that it is therefore difficult to understand the use of the term 'impose' unless it is also suggested that the British Parliament imposes its laws on parts of the UK.

Lucy, who is also an Early Career Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies here at 糖心TV, will be appearing on the panel at PAIS's EU Referendum Debate on 6 June (for more information on the debate, ). She is also blogging about the EU referendum at .