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The top ten ISI ranked journal Security Dialogue has recently published a Special Issue on ‘Resilience and (In)Security.’ This marks one of the key interventions on resilience from a critical perspective and is sure to become a standard reference point in the field. Impressively, the collection includes articles by no less than four members of the International Relations and Security Cluster in PAIS:

• James Brassett and Nick Vaughan-Williams (2015) Security and the performative politics of resilience: Critical infrastructure protection and humanitarian emergency preparedness, 46(1): 32-50.
• Charlotte Heath-Kelly (2015) Securing through the failure to secure? The ambiguity of resilience at the bombsite, 46(1): 69-85.
• Jon Coaffee and Pete Fussey (2015) Constructing resilience through security and surveillance: The politics, practices and tensions of security-driven resilience, 46(1): 86-105.

Resilience is an important and burgeoning theme across the Social Sciences and PAIS has led the way in developing collaborative networks and notable events and projects. Indeed, this rich vein of research activity has already produced a number of books, articles, and an already well-cited Special Issue of Politics edited by James Brassett, Stuart Croft, and Nick Vaughan-Williams (2013), entitled: ‘Security and the Politics of Resilience’, 33(4). The latter features an interview with Helen Braithwaite OBE, one of the architects of the 2004 Civil Contingencies Act, who sits on PAIS’ Impact Advisory Board.  

One of the first published pieces of work from 's ESRC Professorial Fellowship project has been included in an online collection of the most downloaded articles in 2014 from Routledge's Social Science Journals. The article in question appeared in the December issue of Economy and Society, and it is entitled 'The Great Transformation and Progressive Possibilities: The Political Limits of Polanyi's Marxian History of Economic Ideas'.

The article is now fully open access and can be downloaded for free from: .

Matthew's ESRC project is called 'Rethinking the Market', and it has its own stand-alone website: .

The overall objective of the project research is to show how the idea of the market has become fixed in public discourse through first having been used to delimit how we might think about everyday economic life. His Economy and Society article shows that this process of narrowing the debate about feasible economic alternatives can come from the most unexpected of sources.

Much has been made in the wake of the global financial crisis about the potential for activating a Polanyian voice to lead progressive demands for carving out new spaces of economic interaction that are definitively beyond the market realm. Yet here Matthew argues that Polanyi's own chosen history of economic ideas makes it more difficult to think through how these spaces might be first accessed and then activated. It appeals to a historical lineage that inadvertently serves to naturalise the market form, despite his own expressed antipathy to economic theories that did likewise.

Professor recently featured on a podcast for Chatham House, "Does Britain Matter in East Asia?"

Britain has a range of longstanding interests in East Asia, based on historic, commercial and military ties. The government has made strengthening bilateral relationships with emerging powers – in particular China – a central plank of its foreign policy, whilst trying to find a balance between an ambitious commercial agenda and the promotion of democracy and human rights. But while the UK has important interests it has limited influence in maintaining regional security, which is threatened by continuing tensions in the East and South China Seas and on the Korean peninsula.

The participants discuss these challenges, and consider how the next government can balance the UK’s sometimes competing interests in East Asia.

, an Assistant Professor and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow here in PAIS, has recently co-authored a paper, titled ‘“Oil above Water", Economic Interdependence and Third-Party Intervention,’ for the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

Alongside researchers from the Universities Portsmouth and Essex, they have for the first time provided strong evidence for what conspiracy theorists have long thought – oil is often the reason for interfering in another country’s war.

Throughout recent history, countries which need oil have found reasons to interfere in countries with a good supply of it and, the researchers argue, this could help explain the US interest in ISIS in northern Iraq.

The researchers have modelled the decision-making process of third-party countries in interfering in civil wars and examined their economic motives.

They found that the decision to interfere was dominated by the interveners’ need for oil over and above historical, geographical or ethnic ties.

The full paper is available, '"Oil above Water", Economic Interdependence and Third-Party Intervention', .

The paper has received considerable press coverage, the articles can be viewed below:

Matthias Kranke, a PhD student in PAIS, published a review article of two edited volumes in Millennium: Journal of International Studies in 2014. The volumes which Matthias reviewed are:

• Best, Jacqueline and Paterson, Matthew (eds) (2010) Cultural Political Economy, London: Routledge.
• Shields, Stuart, Bruff, Ian and Macartney, Huw (eds) (2011) Critical International Political Economy: Dialogue, Debate and Dissensus, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

The editors in turn decided to respond to the review. Now, their responses, as well as Matt's rejoinder, have very recently been published in Millennium. They can be viewed on the links below.

Review article: <>

Response by Shields, Bruff & Macartney: <>
Response by Best & Paterson: <>
Rejoinder: <>