Monday 9th September

9:30 – 10:00
INTRODUCTION
This year, proceedings will be opened by Professor Michael Cox (with words from Professor Chris Alden) and Dr Rebecca Shah, Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy Romania.

10:00-12:00
PESSIMISM IN THE AGE OF ‘POLYCRISIS’
Speakers: Prof. Alexander Evans OBE, Prof. Slobodan Markovich, Prof. Janne Matláry (online) and Dr. Mary Martin
Chair: Sir. Richard Mottram
In the opening session, a panel of experts will seek to explain why the hopes of a generation coming out of the long dark tunnel called the Cold War appear to have been dashed over the past twenty years. The historian Adam Tooze summarised the mood of pessimism in the following way: ‘If you’ve been feeling confused and as though everything is impacting on you all at the same time, this is not a personal, private experience, this is actually a collective experience.’ That experience he called a ‘polycrisis’: defined as a series of ‘disparate crises interacting in such a way that the overall impact far exceeds the sum of each part’ and, more worryingly still, seemingly incapable of easy resolution. 

13:00-15:00   
THE UNITED STATES ON THE BRINK?
Speakers: Dr. Brian Klaas and Dr. Wojciech Michnik
Chair: John Florescu
In a prescient analysis published as early as 2014, the famous Chicago Pew Research Center noted that the United States was beginning to come apart at the seams, with Republicans and Democrats increasingly at odds with one another in Congress, and Americans in general more polarised than at any time since the end of the Second World War. According to a number of pundits, this polarisation is even threatening the stability of the republic, with consequences that might be as serious for the world as they could be for the United States itself. With some polls indicating that the White House may once again be in the hands of Donald Trump after November, the road ahead looks bumpy indeed.

15:30-17:30   
THE VIEW FROM THE ‘GLOBAL SOUTH’
Speakers: Prof. Michael Cox, Hugh Sandeman, and Dr. Giulia Sciorati
Chair: TBC
A new idea has gained popularity over the past few years: namely that there exists an entity called the ‘Global South’, comprising countries as far apart geographically and culturally as South Africa, Brazil, and India. Criticised by many in the West for lacking conceptual clarity, what the term lacks in precision it more than makes up for in terms of the political impact it is having in international affairs – most visibly in the United Nations where the ‘Global South’ and most Western countries often find themselves in opposing camps. Both Beijing and Moscow have even sought to exploit this divide, claiming that they are the natural leaders of all those countries that have experienced colonialism in the past, all the while suffering economically in a world dominated by the $US dollar and Western bodies like the IMF. 

Tuesday 10th September

10:00-12:00
GAMBLING ON THE FUTURE: ELECTIONS IN THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY
Speakers: Prof. Michael Cox, Dr. Sandra Pralong and Dr. Eric Weaver
Chair: Peter Watkins CB CBE
As 2023 has been dubbed ‘The Year of Coups’, so 2024 has already been named ‘The Year of Elections’. Indeed, perhaps more than any other year in recent times, 2024 is gearing up to be one the greatest tests for democracy yet. With more than half the world’s population (over four billion people) sending their citizens to the polls – from Taiwan and Bangladesh, to India and the European Union, and last but not least the United States in November – the world is facing one of its most politically unsettling moments. 

13:00-15:00   
EUROPE AT THE CROSSROADS?
Speakers: Dr. Ivan Lidarev, Dr. Nathalie Tocci (online), and Dr. Marcin Zaborowski
Chair: Prof. Piers Ludlow
As the Director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome recently reminded us, the challenges facing Europe are more than just about rising energy bills and refugees. According to Nathalie Tocci, it is also about Europe’s failure to deal in a united and decisive fashion with the big foreign policy challenges of our time; not just in Ukraine – where nearly half of all military aid going to Kyiv is still coming from the USA – but even more strikingly in an increasingly unstable Middle East, where ‘Europe has revealed itself in all its weakness’. Tocci claims to remain an optimist about Europe but, as she goes on to confess, ‘crisis after crisis’ is testing her hope. 

15:30-17:30
WAR & ORDER: LESSONS FROM HISTORY
Roundtable: Prof. Christopher Dandeker, Prof. Caroline Kennedy, Prof. Slobodan Markovich, and Dr. Aaron McKeil
Chair: Prof. Michael Cox
Christopher Coker was one of the driving forces behind the Ratiu Dialogues on Democracy, who invariably lit up any discussion with his mordant wit  and erudition. But it was the unfashionable subject of war that made his reputation in an age following the end of the Cold War when all the talk was about Europe and the world more generally becoming more peaceful in an age of globalisation. In this panel, many of Christopher’s friends and admirers reflect on Christopher’s contribution to the study of war and the legacy he has left behind for all of us who had the privilege of knowing and working with him

Michael Cox a Founding Director of LSE IDEAS and Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics. He has held several senior professional positions in the field of international relations including chair of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), member of the Executive Committee of the British International Studies Association, and of the Irish National Committee for the Study of International Affairs, Chair of the United States Discussion Group at Chatham House, Senior Fellow at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies in Canberra, Australia.
He also serves on the editorial board of several academic journals and has been editor of several leading journals in IR, including The Review of International Studies, International Relations, Cold War History, and International Politics.
He is author or editor of many books, recently including a collection of his own essays The Post-Cold War World (2018), Agonies of Empire: US Power from Clinton to Biden (2022), and Ukraine: Russia’s War and the Future of the Global Order
(LSE Public Policy Review Series, 2023).

Christopher Dandeker was Professor of Military Sociology in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London and (with Professor Simon Wessely and Professor Nicola T. Fear), Co-Director of the King’s Centre for Military Health Research [KCMHR]. He joined King’s from the University of Leicester in 1990 as a Senior Lecturer and was promoted to Professor in 1997. He retired in July 2015 as Emeritus Professor. Prof. Dandeker served as Head of Department of War Studies from 1997-2001 and as Head of the School [now Faculty] of Social Sciences and Public Policy from 2005-08. He has advised the British Army on a range of personnel policy issues and has done the same for the Swedish defence forces.
In addition, he has given evidence on personnel issues to the House of Commons Defence Committee and several other bodies. 
Dandeker studies all aspects of civil-military relations.
He is a Fellow of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society and a member of its Council. In 2011, he received the Morris Janowitz Career Achievement Award from IUS and that year was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of the United Kingdom. In 2012 he was elected as a Fellow of King’s College London.

Alexander Evans is Professor in Practice in Public Policy at the London School of Economics and a Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE IDEAS. His previous academic posts have included being the Henry Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress, a Senior Fellow at Yale, and a Gwilym Gibbon Fellow at Nuffield College Oxford.
He has a Ph.D. in politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
A career diplomat, he has worked as an advisor to the Prime Minister in 10 Downing Street, Strategy Director in the Cabinet Office, and Director Cyber in the Foreign Office. He has served as Deputy and Acting High Commissioner to India and (briefly) Pakistan, led the United Nations Security Council expert group on Daesh, Al Qaida and the Taliban, and has been a senior advisor to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke in the U.S. Department of State. He was awarded an OBE for his work in Pakistan, where he led the UK’s work on the Tribal Areas from 2007 to 2009.

John M. Florescu has had a distinguished career as media entrepreneur, television producer and businessman with broad experience in the United States and Europe. A journalist by training, Mr. Florescu is the son of the distinguished historian Radu Florescu and the grandson of a prominent pre-war Romanian diplomat of the same name. Fluent in French and working Romanian, he comes from one of Romania’s oldest families with roots going back more than 500 years. For twenty years, Mr. Florescu served as co-executive producer for Talking with David Frost, and has produced over 180 television specials, documentaries/ interviews for PBS, HBO, A&E, History Channel, Discovery-Times, Disney Channel, CBS Cable and other broadcasters in the US and overseas. Mr. Florescu also advised the late Senator Edward Kennedy on Romanian political affairs as well as many US and Western businesses entering the then-booming East European region.
Mr Florescu has served as Executive Producer for interviews with six U.S. Presidents and with other heads of state including Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela and Benjamin Netanyahu. With all the world’s living Nobel laureates present in Stockholm, he also produced for PBS The Great Nobel Debate for the award’s 90th anniversary. While in Romania, Mr. Florescu produced The King Who Tricked Hitler (2016) about King Michael of Romania, two programmes on Donald Trump and Senator Clinton (2016/2017), and Queen Marie: Heart of Romania (2018); King Michael: The Journey Home (2021); The Mystery of Dacian Gold (2022); the six-part series Marcel Iures Presents Romanian Enigmas (2023); and the three-part series Comrade: The Making, Glory, and Unmaking of a Dictator (2023) focusing on Nicolae Ceausescu.

Caroline Kennedy-Pipe is Professor of International Relations and International Security at the School of Social, Political and Geographical Sciences, Loughborough University. She joined Loughborough in 2018 from the University of Hull, where she was Professor of War Studies and Director of the Centre for Security Studies. Her research interests include contemporary war, the ethics of war and Cold War politics as well as terrorism and Russian foreign policy.
She is currently President of the British International Studies Association and was Chair of the Association from 2004 to 2006. She has a first-class honours degree in History, an MsC Econ in Strategic Studies and a DPhil in International Relations.
She was previously Chair of War Studies at The University of Warwick and had previously been Chair of International Relations, University of Sheffield. Her previous posts include Reader in Politics, at the University of Durham and Director of the Institute for International Studies at the University of Leeds.
She has been quoted as ‘One of the UK’s leading experts in war’ in the Guardian.

Brian Klaas is an Associate Professor in Global Politics at University College London and a contributing writer for The Atlantic magazine. Previously, he was a weekly columnist for The Washington Post, and was also based at both the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford. He is a regular media commentator on global affairs. 
Dr Klaas has advised governments, US political campaigns, NATO, the European Union, multi-billion-dollar investors, international NGOs, and international politicians. Prior to becoming an academic, he worked on US campaigns — including serving as the Policy Director / Deputy Campaign Manager for Mark Dayton’s successful bid for Governor of Minnesota.

Ivan Lidarev was the 2023/24 Mladena and Dianko Sotirov Visiting Fellow at LSE IDEAS, recently completing his PhD in International Relations and Political Science at King’s College London. He received his MA in International Affairs, with a concentration in Asia, from the Elliott School of International Affairs (ESIA), George Washington University and BA in History, Asian Studies and Global and International Studies from Bard College. He boasts a rich think tank experience and between 2014 and 2017, served as advisor at Bulgaria’s National Assembly.

N. Piers Ludlow studied for his undergraduate degree at Trinity College, Oxford before moving on to St Antony’s College Oxford to study for his D.Phil.
He was then a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford until he joined LSE in 1998.
Professor Ludlow’s main research interests lie in the history of Western Europe since 1945, in particular the historical roots of the integration process and the development of the EU. He recently completed a monograph looking in some detail at Roy Jenkins’ presidency of the European Commission, which was published by Palgrave in April 2016. He also works on the Cold War, and in particular West-West relations during the East-West struggle.

Slobodan G. Markovich, MBE is Full Professor at the School of Political Science of the University of Belgrade, where he lectures Political Anthropology, Political History of South-East Europe and Image of European Other. He is also Full Professor at the Institute for European Studies in Belgrade. He has been Research Associate at LSEE/LSE since 2012, and at LSE IDEAS since 2018, as well as head of the Centre for British Studies at the School of Political Science in Belgrade since 2017.
His published monographs include a book on Freud’s pessimism, Pessimistic Anthropology of Sigmund Freud (Belgrade, 2012); on Serbian economist, politician and diplomat Chedomille Miyatovich, A Victorian Among Serbs (Belgrade, 2006); and a monograph on British-(Balkan) Serbian relations, British Perceptions of Serbia and the Balkans 1903-1906 (Paris, 2000, in English).
His (co-)edited collections of papers in English include: British-Serbian Relations from the 18th to the 21st Centuries (Belgrade, 2018), Problems of Identities in the Balkans (Belgrade, 2006), and Challenges to New Democracies in the Balkans (Belgrade, 2004). He has been the coordinator of annual meetings titled ‘Psychoanalysis and Culture’ since 2016. His research interests include: construction of ethnic/ national and religious Identities in the Balkans, British-Balkan Relations, psychoanalytic anthropology, and the History of European pessimism.

Mary Martin is director of the UN Business and Human Security Initiative. Her research focuses on the role of the private sector in conflict and peacebuilding and private security in the international system. She was co-ordinator of the Human Security Study Group 2006-2010, reporting to the High Representative of the European Union. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Cambridge.

Janne Haaland Matláry is Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo and the Norwegian National Defense University College (Forsvarets Høgskole). She specialises in European foreign and defence policy and international security. Her current work focuses on the
polarisation and fragmentation of modern European politics. She aims to better understand the divisions in European democracies today and what causes them to become divided. Her writings include: Hard Power in Hard Times: Can Europe Act Strategically? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Ukraine and Beyond: Russia’s Strategic Security Challenge to Europe (editor and author with Tormod Heier,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and Intervention for Human Rights in Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). From 1997-2000, Professor Matláry served as the deputy Foreign Minister in Kjell Magne Bondevik’s Christian-Democratic government. She has also served as a member of the national defence commission of Norway and is on the board of trustees of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed her a life-long member of the Pontifical Academy of Science (Social Sciences branch). She has also served as a member of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and consultor for the Pontifical Council for the Family.

Aaron McKeil is Academic Director of the MSc International Strategy and Diplomacy Programme at LSE IDEAS. He writes on international disorder.
His forthcoming book exploring the collapse of globalism is titled Cosmopolitan Imaginaries and International Disorder, published by University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. He convenes the International Orders Research Unit at LSE IDEAS and is a member of the Council of Experts at the Centre for History, Strategy, and International Order at Helmut-Schmidt University. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics.

Wojciech Michnik is currently an assistant professor at Jagiellonian University in Krakow and a Transatlantic Project Coordinator of LSE IDEAS CSEEP at the Jagiellonian University. He is also the 2023-24 NATO Security Studies Fulbright Fellow at the University of Arizona. He served as an Eisenhower Defence Fellow (2019) at NATO Defence College; a Fulbright visiting scholar at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute (2015-2016); and a security policy analyst at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland (2014). His main research interests include Transatlantic Security, NATO-Russia relations, and Great Power Competition in the Middle East. Wojciech Michnik holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from Jagiellonian University.

Sir Richard Mottram is an expert on national security issues, including defence policy, strategy and planning. From 1992-2007 he was one of Britain’s top civil servants: he headed several departments, including the Ministry of Defence, and was responsible for security and intelligence matters in the Cabinet Office, and Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. He is also a Visiting Professor in LSE’s Department of Government.

Sandra Pralong is, since September 2015, a State Advisor, member of the Cabinet of the President of Romania, responsible for relations with Romanians abroad. She held a similar position in a previous Administration when, between 1998 and 2000, she helped open up the Romanian state’s relations with its citizens who had fled in Exile during Communism. As a former UN official (UNDP, UNFPA), international foundation executive (Open Society Foundation, SynergEtica) and international media director (Newsweek, New York), Sandra shared her expertise also as a professor at the Academy of Economic Studies and at the University of Bucharest, as well as the University of Niamey, Niger (West Africa). 
Sandra holds a Ph.D. in Political Science (Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris, France), an MA in Business Management (HEC, Lausanne, Switzerland), an MA in International Relations (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Boston, USA), an M.Phil. in Political Philosophy (Columbia University, NY, USA) and a Master’s Degree in Cognitive Sciences (University of Bucharest, Romania). She is the author of several books, countless academic research papers and essays, a public speaker, a trainer and a coach. 

Hugh Sandeman was an international banker for 30 years based in New York, Tokyo, London, and Frankfurt, and for his final decade in the business focused on India, where he worked as a corporate financier and company director. From 2017 to 2023, he was head of the Global Strategies project at LSE IDEAS, responsible for convening discussions between UK policy makers, and academics and other experts within LSE, in the areas of foreign, defence and security policy. Before becoming a banker, Hugh was Tokyo correspondent, international business editor and then New York correspondent of The Economist magazine.

Giulia Sciorati is an LSE Fellow in China and the Global South, in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on (visual) narratives in International Relations, particularly in terms of memory contestation and autocracy promotion. Empirically, she works on China’s relations with post-Soviet neighbours.
Prior to joining LSE, Giulia was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow on an interdepartmental research project entitled “The Belt and Road Initiative and the Impact of COVID-19 on China’s International Projection”, funded by the University of Trento, where she also completed her PhD in International Studies in September 2020. Giulia has spent numerous study and research stays abroad, including at Beijing Language and Culture University, KIMEP University in Almaty, the University of Nottingham, and the University of Oxford.

Rebecca Shah joined the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office in 2010 and was appointed Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy Romania in July 2023. Rebecca previously served as Political Counsellor in the Philippines, where she led teams covering foreign and multilateral policy, prosperity, science, environment, communications and public diplomacy. She has also served as First
Secretary Political in Cyprus, where she worked closely in the UN peace process and with the Turkish Cypriot community and the UK Sovereign Base Areas. Other roles include covering the Western Balkans, especially post-conflict issues. Rebecca has a passion for diversity and inclusion which she brings to every role.
Before joining the FCDO, Rebecca worked in academia – lecturing, researching and publishing in ethics, development and human rights, and she started her working life in psychology, providing psychological assessment and support to children with complex needs. She holds a PhD in global health inequality: justice and public health ethics.

Nathalie Tocci is Director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, part-time professor at the School of Transnational Governance (European University Institute), Honorary Professor at the University of Tübingen and independent non-executive director of Acea. She has been Special Advisor to EU High Representatives Federica Mogherini and Josep Borrell. In that capacity, she wrote the European Global Strategy and worked on its implementation.
She is Europe’s Futures fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, IWM). She was Pierre Keller Visiting Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and, prior to joining Acea, she was an Independent board member first of Edison and then of Eni. She has held research positions at the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels, the Transatlantic Academy, Washington, the European University Institute, Florence, and has taught at the College of Europe, Bruges.

Peter Watkins is a Non-Executive Member of the Board of the UK Space Agency; a Member of the Council of Cranfield University; a Visiting Professor, King’s College London; a Visiting Senior Fellow, LSE IDEAS; and an Associate Fellow, Chatham House. He was formerly the Director General Strategy & International (2017-18) and Director General Security Policy (2014-17) in the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD). In these roles, he was responsible for strategic policy & planning; the Defence dimension of the UK’s cross-government response to Russia and China; defence relations with NATO, the EU and with key bilateral allies; and defence policy aspects of cyber, space and novel technologies. Previous roles included Director General of the Defence Academy (2011-14); Director of Operational Policy (2008-11); Private Secretary to the Defence Secretary (2001-03) and Counsellor (Defence & Aerospace), British Embassy Bonn/Berlin (1996-2000). He was a Visiting Fellow, Harvard University (2006-07).

Eric Beckett Weaver is an associate professor teaching political science at the University of Debrecen. He received his doctorate in History from The University of Oxford in 2008. He is the author and editor of a variety of books and articles on nationalism, minorities, and politics in Southeastern Europe.

Marcin Zaborowski has broad experience in both management and research in foreign and security policy. During his career, Marcin served as the Executive Director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) between 2010-2015, Senior Research Fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) in Paris between 2005-2010, and as the Executive Vice President of the Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He is a member of the Advisory Council to the Foreign Relations and the European Affairs Committee at the Senate of the Polish Republic and a member of the Nuclear Threat Initiative by the European Leadership Network.
He completed his PhD at the University of Birmingham in the UK and since then has worked at the University of Birmingham, Aston University, and Lazarski University in Warsaw Poland. From 2020, Marcin worked as Editor-in-Chief at ResPublica Nowa magazine in Warsaw, Poland. Marcin is the author of Germany, Poland and Europe (Manchester University Press 2004), Bush’s Legacy and America’s Next Foreign Policy (EUISS 2008), and the co-author (with Kerry Longhurst) of The New Atlanticist: Poland’s Foreign and Security Policy Priorities (Blackwells 2007).

Growing threat of populism in society to be addressed at LSE event