UCL Institute of Advanced Studies

Various historians have drawn our attention to North America’s love affair with the automobile during the mid-to late twentieth century. By the mid-1950s—the ‘golden era’ of automobility—automobile sales were skyrocketing across the continent and the car was deeply entrenched in popular culture as a strong symbol of freedom, prosperity and progress.

by Dr Alex Mills (UCL Laws) Prof Rachael Mulheron (Queen Mary Law) Robert Sharp (Head of Campaigns, English PEN) Dr Judith Townend (Sussex Law) As part of this year’s research theme on ‘Lies’, the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies hosted a panel discussion on the present and future of defamation law. How can the law best protect rights of speech and of privacy in a digital age? Has the Defamation...

Vulnerability and post-imperial identities: from Brexit to Ancient Rome and back. by Andrew Gardner (Institute of Archaeology, UCL) This talk discussed the impact of the demise of the British empire upon identities within the UK in the narrow majority for the Leave campaign in the 2016 UK referendum on EU membership. A comparative dimension was also pursued, with analysis of the Roman empire - whi...

The Cuban media has played a central role in shaping ideas of nation and national identity linked to the political system installed after the Revolution. The aim of defending the homeland is still regarded as a mobilizing force and an incentive to safeguard the island’s unity. To furnish those discursive strategies, the past is evoked either in epic terms, reflecting on the heroism of the early re...

by Kate Smith (University of Huddersfield) Narratives of Vulnerability: Rethinking stories about the figure of the refugee in Europe The role of vulnerability in relation to mechanisms of governance and social welfare practices has received growing interest, but how ‘vulnerability’ is operationalised in asylum policy is less well understood. This paper explores narratives of vulnerability in relat...

By David Benigson (CEO, Signal Media) Anastasia Denisova (Communication and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster) Lisa-Maria Neudert (Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford) Gregory Whitfield (Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL) As part of its Lies research theme, the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies hosted a roundtable discussion on media and politics in the age of the vi...

Americans love the Founding Fathers, and American politicians constantly invoke them. Listen to American political debate for any length of time and you will hear the Founders enlisted in support of all manner of things: limited government, gun rights, progressive taxation, and more. But why do American politicians do this? And why does it work with the American electorate?

This paper brings new evidence and argument to the debate on the emergence of multilateral regional security agreements after World War II, encapsulated in Hemmer and Katzenstein’s question, 'Why is there no NATO in Asia?' This discussion on regional orders has overlooked the experience of the inter-American system at the same historical conjuncture. The inter-American experience casts doubt on th...

by Professor Jonathan Herring (University of Oxford). The law is traditionally centered around the norm of an able-bodied, competent, independent, self-sufficient and autonomous man. This creates a legal systems which privileges the values of autonomy, privacy and bodily integrity. For more information please visit: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of-advanced-studies/ias-events/ias-vulnerability-se...

by Elisabeth Lebovici in conversation with Oliver Davis The Institute of Advanced Studies hosted a conversation with Elisabeth Lebovici to discuss her new book Ce que le sida m'a fait: art et activisme à la fin du XXe siècle (‘What AIDS has done to me. Art and Activism at the End of the 20th Century’, Zurich: JRP Ringier, 2017). On minute 53.00 Oliver Davis plays Good Boy by Alain Buffard: https:/...

On Wednesday 20 September 2017 the lives of Puerto Ricans on the island and abroad changed forever. Hurricane María hit Puerto Rico as a category four storm (sustained winds of 150mph), leaving the island in a state of emergency. Essential services such as power, potable water and communication services collapsed....

by Lionel Bailly (Psychoanalysis Unit, UCL), Mairead Hanrahan (SELCS, UCL), David Morgan (Psychoanalyst), Mignon Nixon (HoA, UCL) David Tuckett (Psychoanalysis Unit, UCL), and Rye Holmboe (HoA, UCL). As part of the 2017-18 research theme on ‘Lies’, the IAS welcomed an interdisciplinary panel discussion about the role of psychoanalysis in the age of post-truth. Chairing: Tamar Garb (Institute of Ad...

by Steven Connor This talk considered the vulnerability of those assigned to a category which most human groups treat with angry revulsion: the stupid. Professor Steven Connor will suggest that stupidity is more tightly than ever twinned with shame in our growing epistemocracy. But if the power to shame is toxically potent, the condition of shame, though the most exquisitely painful form of vulner...

Kevin Middlebrook, Professor of Latin American Politics at UCL Institute of the Americas, talks to Austria's Radio FM4 News Rosie Waites about the implications of outcome of the mayoral elections that took place in Venezuela on December 11 2017, which could see opposition parties banned from participating in the next presidential election.

This transnational account of black protest, examines how African Americans engaged with, supported, and were inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement. Bringing black activism into conversation with the foreign policy of both the U.S. and South African governments, this study questions the dominant perception that U.S.-centered anticommunism decimated black international activism. Ins...

The UK’s leaving the European Union at the end of March 2019, will have consequences well beyond its shores, with the economic repercussions felt across the world. Amongst the countries that are likely to be most acutely affected are the small States of the Caribbean that belong to the Commonwealth. For almost forty years, much of their trade and development cooperation with the UK has been within...

Drawing on fresh research from a large ESRC-funded team project in Mexico, I will address the challenges faced by activists or rights defenders within contexts where they are not only fearful of violence but also frustrated by the inadequacy of institutional channels. In such difficult contexts, where state institutions may well be part of the problem, it would seem that activist groups have a vit...

What are the long-term political consequences of counterinsurgent violence? An emerging literature analyzes the socio-political consequences of civil war. Yet, while the bulk of this research focuses on individual-level effects, we still have little knowledge about how these results aggregate up to collective outcomes. This study analyzes the electoral consequences of the genocidal counterinsurgen...

In September 1969 the Nixon Administration launched Operation Intercept along the U.S.-Mexico border and at each of its crossing points. Intercept's stated aims were to end trafficking of marijuana and pills from Mexico to the United States. Intercept brought more than 2,000 federal agents to the border, most of whom were involved in searching every single person, vehicle or plane as they crossed...

Dr. Aleida Guevara, Cuban paediatricain, and daughter of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, delivers this lecture - Cuba sends medical brigades in response to disasters, and has established health centres in low-income and remote areas and trains medical practitioners from across the developing world. Dr Guevara, who has participated in international missions in Angola, Ecuador and Nicaragua, will explain the...

Jill Hedges (Oxford Analytica) - 2017 marks the 70th anniversary of female suffrage in Argentina. Although Eva Perón has often been credited with being the driving force behind the granting of women's suffrage in 1947, in fact it was the culmination of a long struggle by women’s rights lobbyists. However, Evita’s role in organising and using the women's vote, and in giving women a political model,...

This panel discussion assesses the outcome of Argentina’s legislative elections on 22 October 2017. For some, the mid-term elections is a gauge of the chances of former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to stage a political comeback, as well as a vital political test for the agenda of current president Mauricio Macri. Given the highly polarised context of contemporary Argentine politics, th...

50 years after his execution, this seminar explores some of the many facets of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s extraordinary life and legacy. Chaired and introduced by Dr Paulo Drinot (UCL Americas). Speakers in order of appearance: Professor Dirk Kruijt (Utrecht), Professor Elizabeth Dore (Southampton), Richard Gott, Dr Helen Yaffe (LSE), Dr James Scorer (Manchester), Nikolaos Souslous (UCL)

Reflecting on the recent experience of writing (with Christian Høgsbjerg) a biography of Toussaint Louverture, I draw in the talk on Edouard Glissant’s claim – in his Caribbean Discourse – of the continued need to ‘argue around Toussaint’. The paper focuses on the domestication of the revolutionary implications of Louverture’s life by those who have presented him as an ancien régime figure, and de...

Many medieval and early modern Jewish calendars were based on the assumption that the calendar repeats itself exactly after 247 years. This lecture sketches the history of the 247-year calendar cycle based on evidence provided by a comprehensive corpus of medieval and early modern manuscripts from different geo-cultural areas.