UCL - School of Public Policy / Political Science

We are happy to share that Julie Norman's article 'How Israeli conduct in the West Bank could derail Donald Trump’s latest peace plan for Gaza' was not only published in The Conversation UK but was also discussed by Alistair Campbell on Monday's episode (no. 560) of The Rest is Politics .

Listen and watch here: https://bit.ly/45Thoh9

At the end of July, we shared SPP alumna Sosan Hashimi's contribution to our Student Experts Blog. Today, we are sharing that Sosan is a Face of UCL as part of the university's bicentenary - congratulations!

In this short portray, she shares her journey from being a lawyer in Kabul to becoming the founder of the charity Beyond Borders Empowerment in London and completing an MSc in International Public Policy at our Department.

Read about Sosan here: https://bit.ly/3TEhNBn

How do media in authoritarian countries portray refugees?

For her dissertation, Anouska Panda (BSc Politics and International Relations) conducted a qualitative frame analysis of 41 articles published across four state-aligned media outlets in Belarus and Turkey.

She argues that despite notable differences in political context, both governments use refugee discourse in a surprisingly similar manner. Importantly, the study finds that refugee discourse is not really about refugees; rather, it conveys important signals about state identity, legitimacy and geopolitical status.

Read the article here: https://bit.ly/4fGiUcu

Thursday are SEBS-days!
Hashimi (MSc International Public Policy) contributed to our Student Experts Blog the article 'The Paper Republic: Why Afghanistan’s Collapse Was Decades in the Making'.

The article is based on Sosan's disseration for which she conducted in-depth interviews with former Afghan government officials, military commanders, UN representatives, US foreign policy experts, and academics to critically examine the internal and external factors that contributed to the fall of the Republic of Afghanistan in 2021. Her research challenges the popular narrative of a ‘sudden collapse,’ arguing instead that Afghanistan’s fall was the product of two decades of internal decay combined with a handful of catastrophic external decisions; a distinction that matters for how the world responds to the next fragile state on the brink.

Read her article here:

The Paper Republic: Why Afghanistan’s Collapse Was Decades in the Making by Sosan Hashimi – UCL PolSci Insights The Paper Republic: Why Afghanistan’s Collapse Was Decades in the Making by Sosan Hashimi 30th July 2026 by marthe.lisson For her dissertation, Sosan Hashimi (MSc International Public Policy) conducted in-depth interviews with former Afghan government officials, military commanders, UN representat...

Next up in our Student Experts Blog Series is Tess Delepierre's (BSc Politics and International Relations) article '“You Don’t Need to Be Semi-nude to Be a Feminist”: Faith, Education, and Women’s Rights in Morocco'.

For her dissertation, Tess conducted twenty-one semi-structured interviews with highly educated urban women in Casablanca and Rabat in the summer of 2025. Her research challenges two assumptions Western social theory has long applied to Muslim women: that education weakens religious faith, and that feminist consciousness requires secular foundations. What she found instead was something far more textured, and more instructive.

Read her article here: https://bit.ly/4brfTKk

Next up in our Student Experts Blog Series is Delepierre's (BSc Politics and International Relations) article '“You Don’t Need to Be Semi-nude to Be a Feminist”: Faith, Education, and Women’s Rights in Morocco'.

For her dissertation, Tess conducted twenty-one semi-structured interviews with highly educated urban women in Casablanca and Rabat in the summer of 2025. Her research challenges two assumptions Western social theory has long applied to Muslim women: that education weakens religious faith, and that feminist consciousness requires secular foundations. What she found instead was something far more textured, and more instructive.

Read Tess' article here: https://bit.ly/3TeLJE8

We are happy to launch the next round of our Student Experts Blog series! And are kicking of with an article by Samuel Pryor who recently graduated from our Department with a Bsc in Politics and International Relations.

For his dissertation, Samuel combined geocoded data on Chinese development finance projects with protest data from across Africa, which allowed him to examine whether protest activity within 50km of a project occurred and/or changed after the project implementation.

Using a project-year panel design, he compared protest activity near the same project before and after work began. The research provided no evidence that Chinese development finance systematically increased local protest activity in Africa, which challenges the alarmist view upheld by Western media and policymakers that Chinese development finance is, at least in part, responsible for a rise in protest activity in Africa.

Read the Samuel's article here on the Student Experts Blog:

A Blessing or a Curse? Chinese Development Finance and Protest Activity in Africa by Samuel Pryor – UCL PolSci Insights A Blessing or a Curse? Chinese Development Finance and Protest Activity in Africa by Samuel Pryor 16th July 202616th July 2026 by marthe.lisson For his dissertation, Samuel Pryor (BSc Politics and International Relations) combined geocoded data on Chinese development finance projects with protest da...

📣 Have you heard? Thanks to incredible minds from every corner of the globe, from curious first-years to Nobel prize-winning researchers, we’re now joint #8 in the QS World University Rankings.

We are University College London. And here, it can happen.

🔗 Learn more about our ranking: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2026/jun/ucl-ranked-8th-best-university-qs-world-rankings