The world’s elderly population is growing. By 2050 it’s expected that one third of the population of Europe will be over 65 – and this gives older people more political clout. Could this ‘grey power’ be having an effect on the world’s economies? Tim Vlandas explains his prize-winning research.
Many laws across the world that make homosexuality a crime were imposed during rule by the British Empire. Joseph O’Mahoney attempts to unpick why these stigmatising laws persist in a new post for The Conversation co-authored by Enze Han.
Elections – national and local – should not curtail academic engagement.
University of Reading academics should remain engaged in public debates, even while elections are imminent in the UK, says Professor Steve Mithen, Deputy Vice-Chancellor.
This week there are a number of local elections across the UK. This means that government departments and agencies are subject to the so-called rules of ‘purdah’, or pre-election period, restricting what can be discussed in public by civil servants.
By Dr Federico Faloppa, Lecturer in Italian Studies
Irish Naval personnel from the LÉ Eithne (P31) rescuing migrants as part of Operation Triton
Ahead of the General Election that will take place on 4 March this year, President Sergio Mattarella urged all parties to keep their electoral promises realistic, practical and responsible, and notably, to calm down.
In his New Year’s speech, Mattarella attempted to remind the campaigning parties, and the general public, that jobs and the economy are “the primary and most serious social issue, especially for the young.”
However, it seems that the advice has fallen on deaf ears. Not only are Italian election campaigns dominated by unfulfillable promises, but they are also presenting immigration as Italy’s biggest concern: the perfect scapegoat not to tackle the real problems of the country, and to cover for main parties’ political failure to offer Italians decent socio-economic prospects. Continue reading →
By Dr Mark Shanahan, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations
Deep Space Gateway in lunar orbit as proposed in 2017
This week, in the run-up to World Space Week, NASA announced a long-term co-operation project with Roscosmos, the Russian space agency to develop the Deep Space Gateway, a manned space station orbiting the moon.
The US agency sees this project as a stepping stone towards a manned mission to Mars. While of course there’s no detail, no dates and no certainty that this project has any more certainty than the mirage of the Southern border Wall, it’s a quite different take on space exploration by the Trump administration. Continue reading →
Suffrage is arguably the most important single event in women’s history; despite popular conception it was not a fight for freedom, it was the campaign for equal citizenship waged by men and women across the class divide and the political spectrum. The refusal of the law to allow women to take part directly in political life relegated them to often disparate lobbyists and pressure groups, leaving the decision to grant the vote at the mercy of sympathetic individuals and the political priorities of the parliamentary parties. This lecture will consider the parliamentary politics, the campaigns and divisive issues of class, marriage and militancy that fractured the suffrage movement and ultimately, we will ask the question – is this best described as first wave feminism?
Dr Jacqui Turner is a Lecturer in Modern History and Director of Outreach at the University of Reading. Her present research examines the contribution of female pioneers in politics and early female MPs. Jacqui currently works with Parliament on the Vote100 Project, BBC Radio 4 and the Smithsonian. In 2019 she will manage the Astor100 project celebrating the centenary of women sitting in the House of Commons.
The Decline and Revival of the World’s Most Successful Political Idea
Bill Emmott, former editor of the Economist
Free entry. No reservation necessary.
The idea of ‘the West’ has underpinned our prosperity and security for over seven decades. It stands for democratic institutions and values, a rules-based system of steadily freer trade, and a common European and Atlantic defence through NATO. Now it is under threat from within, as national-populists from Budapest to Washington seek not more democracy but authoritarian rule, not freer trade but protectionism, not common security but narrow national interest.
This is the alarming context in which the UK general election is taking place. Few people are better placed to analyse it than Bill Emmott, who presents his new book The Fate of the West at the University of Reading’s Van Emden Theatre on Tuesday 9 May at 7PM. Bill Emmott was editor of the Economist for thirteen years, has dissected the malaise of countries as distant as Japan and Italy, and is currently an independent writer and consultant, contributing to a wide range of publications and blogs including In Facts. He is joint founder of the Wake Up Foundation, a charity dedicated to using film, text and data for public education about the decline of Western societies. But The Fate of the West is not a cry of despair; rather, it is a tool kit for those of us who want to see Western values revive and prevail.
Reading Interdisciplinary Research Network for the Study of Political History & Politics in America
This is a one day conference to mark the launch of the new reading Interdisciplinary research network – The Monroe Group for the study of politics in the Americas.
The Monroe Group, is designed to encourage dialogue between scholars in the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences working on all aspects of politics in the American continent. It has been developed in response to recent expansion of staff and student recruitment working in the field of US and Latin American politics at the University of Reading.
The Monroe Group will be home to existing UoR researchers and PhD students working in this area and will facilitate new collaborative projects, research grants applications and teaching development across all disciplines, including
