Upcoming seminars

All seminars will take place between 1.15pm and 2.05pm unless otherwise stated.

If you want to attend any of our seminars, please arrive at the location 5 to 10 minutes before the start time. You do not need to book your place to attend.

Dr Jack Seddon (Waseda University)

• Title: The Governed Price of Oil: Power, Rules and the Making of the Brent Benchmark
• Speaker: Dr Jack Seddon
• Date: 6 October 2026
• Location: 1WN 2.4

About this seminar

During this seminar, Dr Jack Seddon will discuss the following research:

Benchmarks such as Brent, WTI, and Dubai set the price of much of the world's oil. Yet they are produced privately, for profit, from information supplied by firms with a stake in the result. Why should anyone trust them?

This paper argues that a benchmark's authority rests on a pay-to-play bargain. A small club of price-makers bears the cost of making the price in return for a say in it; price-takers use the price without shaping it, but can walk away to a rival; and governors such as Platts and ICE write the rules that keep the two in balance.

Drawing on four decades of trading data, archives, and interviews, the paper puts a number on membership of the club that makes the world's oil price: about half a dollar a barrel since 2003, or roughly $350,000 a tanker cargo. Brent, it shows, has survived repeated reform by redirecting traders' strategic behaviour rather than eliminating it. Comparisons with WTI, Dubai, and the failed APPI show that governance, not liquidity or size alone, decides whether a benchmark lasts.

Dr Sam Crawley (Victoria University of Wellington)

• Title: TBC
• Speaker: Sam Crawley
• Date: 13 October 2026
• Location: 1W 2.102

About this seminar

We will add details about this seminar soon. Please check regularly for updates.

Dr Hyeyoon Park (University of Bath)

• Title: Disorders in Critical Mineral Governance Amid Geopolitical Turbulence: A Comparison of Critical Mineral Policies in the US, the EU, and China
• Speaker: Dr Hyeyoon Park
• Date: 10 November 2026
• Location: 1W 2.102

About this seminar

During this seminar, Dr Hyeyoon Park will discuss the following research:

Minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earths are essential components of clean energy technologies and play a crucial role in the global net-zero transformation.

Over the past decade, a range of public and private governance initiatives aimed at mitigating the social and environmental risks of critical mineral extraction have emerged; however, these efforts remain fragmented and weak in enhancing the accountability of mining companies. At the same time, shifting geopolitical dynamics surrounding access to critical minerals are reshaping national and international governance along global supply chains, driven largely by concerns over national security and geoeconomics.

How have countries developed and framed their emerging critical minerals policies, and how have they justified their strategies in light of these geopolitical shifts? To what extent are sustainability concerns incorporated into rapidly evolving policy frameworks, including nascent transnational supply-chain regulations? We address these questions through a comparative analysis of critical mineral policies in the world’s three largest economies – the EU, the US, and China – drawing on process tracing and qualitative document analysis.

Dr Andrei Guter-Sandu (University of Bath)

• Title: The Electrified State: The Coming Fault Lines of Net Zero and the Politics They Expose
• Speaker: Dr Andrei Guter-Sandu
• Date: 17 November 2026
• Location: 1WN 3.11

About this seminar

During this seminar, Dr Andrei Guter-Sandu will discuss the following research:

As decarbonisation reorganises heat, mobility, and industrial production around electricity, access to electricity increasingly conditions social participation and economic reproduction. Yet in Britain, this dependence is governed through institutions inherited from a liberalised electricity system that treated electricity primarily as a commodity.

This article develops the concept of the Electrified State to analyse the political consequences of that mismatch. Drawing on a longitudinal decomposition of the British electricity bill, it argues that the coming fault lines of net zero are conflicts over electricity’s political status: commodity, public infrastructure, foundational service, or an unstable combination of all three.

The article shows how electrification repoliticises bills and levies by making them carry questions of affordability, access, compensation, and legitimacy. It contributes to environmental state debates by showing that decarbonisation turns on whether inherited institutions can allocate the costs and protections of electrification in politically legitimate ways.

Previous seminars

2026

• Breaking Bad: Leaders’ Personality Changes and Consequences for Foreign Policies - Professor Juliet Kaarbo, University of St. Andrews
• Sexual Violence in Racial Capitalism - Professor Alison Phipps, York St. John University
• The Iron Road Home: Ukrainian Railways, Resilience, and Ontological Security in War - Dr Bohdana Kurylo, London School of Economics
• Outsourcing Genocide: A Critical Analysis of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the evolving logics of Settler Colonialism - Professor Paul Higate, University of Bath
• Distorted Learning: Power, Identity, and Political Narratives in Times of Crisis - Dr Stephen Hall, University of Bath
• Gender Equality Resistance and Political Competition: The Emergence of a Gender Politics Cleavage? - Professor Susan Banducci, University of Birmingham
• The Power of Justification: How Framing Women’s Underrepresentation Shapes Support for Positive Action Measures - Professor Hilde Coffe, University of Bath

2025

• She’s 'Too Ambitious': Does Running for the US Presidency Penalize Women in Politics? - Professor Jennifer Piscopo, Royal Holloway
• Ableist or Accessible? A Comparative Analysis of Disability and European Parliaments - Professor Liz Evans, University of Southampton
• A Global New Right? The International of Conservative Intellectuals - Dr Valentin Behr, Institut d'études avancées de Paris
• From Confrontation to Cooperation: How Leaders' Beliefs Shape Enduring Interstate Rivalries - Dr Consuelo Thiers, University of Edinburgh
• What Comparative Area Studies (CAS) Brings to the Table: Leveraging and Integrating Area-Based Knowledge in the Social Sciences - Professor Rudra Sil, University of Pennsylvania
• X Marks the Spot: The Performance of Precise Targeted Killing of Terrorists on Social Media - Dr Chris Fuller, University of Southampton
• Strategic Representation of Women in Radical Right Parties: Evidence from Regional Council Elections in Italy - Rosella Merullo, Universität Hamburg
• Issue Ownership and Niche Parties’ Longevity in Consociations - Dr Timofey Agarin, Queen’s University Belfast

2024

• Desertion and Conscientious Objection in the Context of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine - Dr Dina Bolokan Université de Neuchâtel
• ChatGPT as a tool for reflective assessment - Professor Felia Allum, University of Bath
• Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Latin America - Dr Luis Schenoni, University College London
• Colliding Catastrophes: Climate Change and Online Misinformation - Dr Susannah Crockford, University of Exeter
• Dump her in Anatolia: Violent language in populist discourse - Lucas Scheel, University of Adelaide
• Podcasts for Assessment and Feedback__ - Professor Hilde Coffe, University of Bath
• Linking epistemological and ontological in/security: Hungary's identity crisis, Russian disinformation and Hungarians' vernacular insecurity - Dr Alena Drieschova, University of Cambridge
• Normative Agency of African States in UN Cybernorms Processes - Ndidi Olibamoyo, University of Bath
• Brexit, Facebook, and Transnational Right-Wing Populism - Dr Natalie-Anne Hall, Loughborough University
• The Emergence of Roles in British Foreign Policy: How the UK Interprets Russian Disinformation - Sean Garrett, University of Bath
• Shi'ite Environmental Ethics in a Globalising World: Man and Nature in M.H. Tabatabai's 'Ethics of Moderation' - Dr Bianka Speidl, University of Exeter
• Interpreting EU27-UK Parliamentary Diplomacy - Dr Cherry Miller, University of Glasgow
• Female Empowerment and Extreme Violence against Women - Dr Sara Polo, University of Essex
• The Role of Conflict-Seeking and Conflict-Avoidance in Explaining Gender Gaps in Political Engagement - Dr Rosalind Shorrocks, University of Manchester
• From Ontological Security to Existential Threat: Retracing the Emergence of Contemporary Anti-Technology - Dr Mauro Lubrano, University of Bath
• Meadows and Uplands: Leave’s Vision of the Post-Referendum Good Life - Dr Mike Bolt, University of Bath
• How to Encourage Citizen Empowerment in Behavioural Public Policy - Professor Peter John, King's College London

2023

• Hegel in Italy: How Ideas Became Political Practice - Dr Fernanda Gallo, University of Cambridge
• The UK Voter ID Reform: Effects on Voter Attitudes and Behaviour - Professor Petra Schleiter, University of Oxford
• "Enemies Within/Enemies Without": How Do Emotional and Security-Based Fears of "Infiltration" Direct and Shape Campaigns of Mass Violence? - Dr Leah Owen, Swansea University
• Female Empowerment and Extreme Violence against Women - Dr Sara Polo, University of Essex
• Understanding Territorial Withdrawal: Israeli Occupations and Exits - Dr Robert Geist-Pinfold, Durham University
• Meme-ing Waves: Unpacking Political Narratives in the Romanian Context - Ms Mimi Mihailescu, University of Bath
• The Syrian Conflict in the News: Coverage of the War and the Crisis of US Journalism - Dr Gabriel Huland, University of Bath
• En/Countering the State: Understanding Citizen Agency at the Front Lines of Democratic Government - Professor John Boswell, University of Southampton
• Class, Power, Democratic Socialism: The Politics and Legacy of Aneurin Bevan - Dr Nye Davis, Cardiff University