UCL Institute of Advanced Studies

In December, 2015 the Paris Agreement on Climate Change was adopted by 196 governments at the 21st Conference of the Parties. It limits average global warming to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial global temperatures, and seeks as an aspirational target to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C. The focus has now shifted to the efforts of individual countries to make "nationally determined contributions"...

Was Donald Trump’s win over Democrat Hillary Clinton really that surprising or unprecedented? It may seem so, given the gaffs, one-liners, and memorable moments, but her loss and his victory were really decades in the making. This talk, given by an expert on the history of US conservatism and political life, will trace this longer history and provide a revealing set of insights into the rise of Do...

This seminar presentation will explore the issues surrounding staged authenticity in relation to the Haida People of the Pacific North West Coast of Canada. More broadly, Dr Lovell's research focuses on authentic and inauthentic places and her areas of interest include heritage cities, sites and performativity, urban gentrification, hyperreal light shows, visual methodologies and film locations.

Existing discussions of climate change reduce it to a technical problem to be solved by better science, engineering or economics. Taking responses to climate change in the Caribbean region as case study which is instructive for responses globally, this article examines the social and political relations of climate change to argue for an alternative understanding.

The UCL Institute of the Americas is pleased to announce that its 2017 annual Eleanor Roosevelt lecture will be delivered by Sir Keir Starmer MP. Keir Starmer's maiden parliamentary speech after his election in 2015 referenced Eleanor Roosevelt's inspiration to modern advocates of human rights. This was in recognition of her role as chair and driving force of the United Nations Human Rights Commis...

What happens when state perpetrators publicly confess to human rights violations in past dictatorships? The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission considered them crucial to delivering on the promise of truth and reconciliation. But Payne’s study of perpetrators’ confessions within and outside such commissions challenges that assumption. She finds that perpetrators’ versions of the past...

In 2014 a corruption scheme emerged in Brazil with unprecedented political and judicial repercussions. Dubbed Lava Jato (Car Wash in Portuguese), the investigation has uncovered large-scale bribery, kickbacks, money laundering, cartel practice, influence peddling and illegal campaign finance involving the state-run oil company Petrobras.

Professor Kevin Middlebrook TalkRadio interview on current state of relations between Mexico and the USA over the Donald Trump's plan to build a wall along the Mexico-US border.

Since the late 1980s developing countries have come under considerable pressure to revise their intellectual property policies and practices. One area where pressures have been exceptionally controversial is in pharmaceuticals: historically, fearing the costs of providing private property rights over knowledge in this area, developing countries did not grant patents to drugs. Now they must do so.

In the contemporary neoliberal context, where the princess bride is a privileged consumer citizen, the destination white wedding is a niche product for the tourist industry, and the Caribbean is a particularly popular destination, fulfilling 'Western ideas of [paradise and] a romantic other' (C. M. Hall and Tucker 2004: 10). Operating in the global market place, companies such as Sandals actively...

The Brazilian state in the 21st century is at the same time a coercive state, employing a large degree of lethal violence against its own citizens; a national developmental state, coordinating the commanding heights of the economy in the service of domestic industry and export promotion; a constitutional state, with a formal commitment to equality of citizenship and the rule of law; and a social d...

On December 13, UCL Americas students and distinguished guests had the opportunity to listen to and discuss with two leading experts on Cuba, Professors Hal Klepak (UCL Americas Visiting Fellow), and Jean Stubbs (UCL Americas Associate Fellow) talking about their reflections and assessment on Cuba after the death of its former leader Fidel Castro (November 25, 2016). This event was convened by Dr...

'Implementation Deficit' has been framed as the principal threat to the sustainability of the Caribbean Community. Consequently, limited attention has been paid to analysing the correlated 'participation deficit' and the extent of 'citizen' inclusion/exclusion within the regional framework of governance.

Iwan Morgan, Ronald Reagan’s first British biographer, discusses Reagan’s life from small-town Illinois boyhood, through his Hollywood years, to his political career – first as California governor, then as national conservative spokesman, and finally as US president – in his newly published book.

When a lone-actor terrorist, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, attacked Parliament Hill in Ottawa in October 2014, there was little recognition that his was not the first such attack at the heart of Canadian democracy. In May 1966, Paul Joseph Chartier took a homemade bomb into the public gallery of the House of Commons intending to use it to kill Members of Parliament. Instead, he blew himself up in a washro...

The 2016 US presidential election process promises to be controversial and high octane right up until election day on 7 November. Just over a week after the election has taken place, Clodagh Harrington (De Montfort), Tom Packer (Oxford) and Timothy Stanley (The Telegraph) join Professor Iwan Morgan to discuss the results and their likely impact on the American political system.

Coined in the United Kingdom in the early nineties, the creative economy refers to the services and products protected by intellectual property rights, in which the “creative content” plays an essential role. Sectors such as the visual and performing arts, the film industry, publishing, videogames, music or in some cases gastronomy and architecture; are included.

With its billion-dollar annual revenue stream, its international touring shows and its striking cultural presence in such destination-cities as Las Vegas, Cirque du Soleil has greatly contributed to the image of Québec as a world-renowned capital of the circus arts. Tonight’s talk offers an exploration of this brightly shining figure by anchoring it in historical and cultural specificities that he...

The Portuguese ship Arrogante was captured in late November 1837 by the HMS Snake, off the coast of Cuba. At the time of her capture, the Arrogante had more than 330 Africans on board. All of them were liberated soon after the vessel reached Montego Bay, Jamaica. Soon after their arrival, a chilling mystery surrounding the alleged practices carried out by her captain and crew ...

That amnesia about the Grenada Revolution is a problem is widely recognized. But what is asked less often is: What does the predominant focus on the tragic fall of the Grenada Revolution in 1983 leave out? What do other genres of memory enable? How do they think their way out of and beyond tragedy? While the state, law, and politics undoubtedly have a role to play in reconciliation and renewal in...

This event is the launch of the recently published Transitional Justice in Latin America: The Uneven Road from Impunity towards Accountability (Routledge, 2016) edited by Elin Skaar, Jemima Garcia-Godos and Cath Collins. Professor Cath Collins will be joined by Dr Pilar Domingo and Dr Par Engstrom to discuss the main findings of this 3 year, inter-regional research project as well as its main impl...

In the run-up to the U.S. Presidential election, Professor Iwan Morgan and artist Marisa J. Futernick discuss the role of personal narrative, biography, and place in the American Presidency. This event coincides with the publication of Futernick’s new book of short stories and photographs, '13 Presidents', which features each President from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush as a protagonist.

This event offers an opportunity to take stock of the many challenges facing the implementation phase of the recently concluded peace agreement between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC) in Colombia.

This work explores the profound social, cultural, and political changes that affected the way in which Canadians and Australians defined themselves as a ‘people’ from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s.

This talk examined the changing nature of drug-related violence in Mexico with a view to providing an analytical framework to account for the country´s human rights crisis. The presentation traces the main trends observed in drug-trafficking and drug-related violence against the backdrop of transition to democracy.