LSE IDEAS

24/09/2026

📰"Europe on High Alert As Russia Sows Panic With Hybrid Attacks" | Newsweek

Matthew Arnold, programme director of LSE IDEAS’ Democratic Resilience in a New Age of War Program comments on Russia's increasing threats to Europe, quoted in Newsweek's recent piece.

“The intent is very simple- to cause a pervasive, intensifying sense among European publics that insecurity is increasing,” Arnold told Newsweek.

⬇️Read the full article

By Brendan ColeSenior Reporter0ShareNewsweek is a Trust Project memberSee more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.Russia is stepping up hybrid attacks against Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron has said in the la...

23/09/2026

🌏FREE EVENT | LSE Global South Dialogue Series: "Active Non-Alignment and the Global South"

Over the past few years, impelled by the wars in Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza as well as by BRICS expansion , non-alignment is back with a vengeance, albeit in a new incarnation, as Active Non-Alignment (ANA). In this event Jorge Heine will discuss the significance of ANA for the future of world order.

📆23 September 2026 | 2pm - 3pm
📌Online

⬇️Register Here

Over the past few years, impelled by the wars in Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza as well as by BRICS expansion , non-alignment is back with a vengeance, albeit in a new incarnation, as Active Non-Alignment (ANA). Though originated in Latin America in 2019-2020, as the region faced the triple whammy of the p...

22/09/2026

Last week, LSE researcher Dr Matthew Benson-Strohmayer presented oral amicus observations before the International Criminal Court in The Hague during the reparations proceedings in The Prosecutor v. Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman (‘Ali Kushayb’), concerning atrocities committed in Darfur.

Matthew co-authored expert economic evidence submitted by the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN). The research examines the economic and institutional consequences of the violence in Darfur, including the long-run fiscal structures through which predatory forms of rule developed, and considers the implications for collective and programmatic reparations, particularly in areas such as education and healthcare.

The intervention draws directly on Matthew’s research at LSE on the economic history and political economy of Sudan, including his book project, Of Rule Not Revenue: Predation, State-Unbuilding, and Conflict in Sudan and South Sudan, 1821-2023, for Cambridge University Press’s African Studies Series, as well as his wider work on fiscal governance, predatory rule, the political economy of conflict and crisis, and the relationship between war, humanitarian intervention, peace and economic institutions. It also builds on his published research on Sudan and South Sudan, including articles in Comparative Studies in Society and History and the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.

⬇️Watch the full hearing online here

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22/09/2026

Can an officially atheist state take a fundamentalist turn?

In this new China Dialogues piece, Gerda Wielander challenges the familiar assumption that religion and politics occupy entirely separate spheres in contemporary China.
She argues that under Xi Jinping, the promotion of state morality, traditional culture and the Sinicisation of religion has increasingly blurred the boundaries between the political, the moral and the spiritual.

From the socialist core values and the revival of folk religion to the Party’s concern with faith, social cohesion and “traditional values”, Wielander asks whether China’s current trajectory is best understood not simply as tighter religious control, but as a distinctly Chinese form of fundamentalist politics.

⬇️Read the full piece
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/cff/2026/09/17/has-china-taken-a-fundamentalist-turn/

17/09/2026

🍃FREE EVENT: Green Political Economy

In this latest event organised by the Geopolitics of Climate Change project, LSE IDEAS proposes to examine the ongoing impact of the energy transition through a series of events aimed at unpacking key features of this world in the making and the role that the energy transition has in that process.

📆 October 13th 2026, 6pm-7pm
🎤 Professor Robert Falkner, chaired by Professor Christopher Alden

⬇️ Register Here

The de-carbonisation of industrial economies is moving apace and bringing with it a silent transition, a phenomenon ‘hiding in plain sight’, in the foundational structures of the international political economy. New sources of energy are not only propelling the adoption of green technologies and...

11/09/2026

🎞️Why has the small-budget Teochew-language film Dear You travelled where many Chinese blockbusters have not?

In this new (In)Visible China piece, Xiaoning Lu argues that the film’s success across parts of Southeast Asia cannot be understood simply as Chinese national soft power.
Instead, Dear You resonates because it draws on something older and more intimate: Chaoshan culture, Teochew language, qiaopi remittance letters, diasporic memory, and the social networks created by generations of migration across the South China Sea world.
The piece also complicates the controversy over whether the film should be read as “united-front” cultural work. Cultural affinity, Lu argues, should not be too quickly collapsed into political allegiance.

⬇️Read the full piece:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/cff/2026/09/09/dear-you-chinese-soft-power/

10/09/2026

🍃FREE EVENT: Green Political Economy

In this latest event organised by the Geopolitics of Climate Change project, LSE IDEAS proposes to examine the ongoing impact of the energy transition through a series of events aimed at unpacking key features of this world in the making and the role that the energy transition has in that process.

The de-carbonisation of industrial economies is moving apace and bringing with it a silent transition, a phenomenon ‘hiding in plain sight’, in the foundational structures of the international political economy. New sources of energy are not only propelling the adoption of green technologies and reconfiguring global supply and production chains but are also reshaping centres of global power in unexpected ways. At the same time, polarising political narratives surrounding climate action are complicating the development of coherent environmental policies and intensifying geopolitical frictions, influencing how states position themselves within the emerging energy landscape. Join Professor Robert Falkner for the conversation.

📆 October 13th 2026, 6pm-7pm

⬇️ Register Here

The de-carbonisation of industrial economies is moving apace and bringing with it a silent transition, a phenomenon ‘hiding in plain sight’, in the foundational structures of the international political economy. New sources of energy are not only propelling the adoption of green technologies and...

10/09/2026

🌏FREE EVENT | LSE Global South Dialogue Series: "Active Non-Alignment and the Global South"

Over the past few years, impelled by the wars in Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza as well as by BRICS expansion , non-alignment is back with a vengeance, albeit in a new incarnation, as Active Non-Alignment (ANA). In this event Jorge Heine will discuss the significance of ANA for the future of world order.

📆23 September 2026 | 14:00
📌Online

⬇️Register Here

Over the past few years, impelled by the wars in Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza as well as by BRICS expansion , non-alignment is back with a vengeance, albeit in a new incarnation, as Active Non-Alignment (ANA). Though originated in Latin America in 2019-2020, as the region faced the triple whammy of the p...

10/09/2026

📝From Ukraine’s Wartime Adaptation to Europe’s Defence Readiness: Learning from Ukraine’s Adaptive Governance in the Defence Sector | by Matthew B. Arnold, Viktoriia Roller, Khrystyna Zhyvogliad

Europe’s defence challenge is more than drones and budgets; it is about whether the defence institutions of states and their wider security apparatuses can keep pace with modern warfare and increasing hybrid threats. This Research Report uses Ukraine’s wartime experience to develop a holistic concept of adaptive defence governance and explores its lessons for enhancing Europe’s defence readiness during peacetime.

This report was produced in partnership with the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO), an NGO registered in Kyiv, Ukraine.

⬇️Read Here

Europe’s defence challenge is more than drones and budgets; it is about whether the defence institutions of states and their wider security apparatuses can keep pace with modern warfare and increasing hybrid threats. This paper uses Ukraine’s wartime experience to develop a holistic concept of a...