Among the key puzzles of Ukraine’s post-communist development have been its poor economic performance and an inability to develop a fully rule-of-law state. The two issues are related, my research suggests, by way of “the Ukrainian oligarchy”, the country’s dominant political economy governance regime. Even before the latest Russian invasion, therefore, it was clear that reform of this institution would be crucial, not only for Ukraine to achieve greater prosperity and security, but also to ensure its survival as a sovereign nation state in a “bad neighbourhood” over the longer term.

In this talk, I argue that unconventional ways of political contention successfully shape the regime, its elites, and its forms of oppression even under the most authoritarian contexts and repressions. Using the context and temporal development of the Kazakh Spring protests (2019-ongoing), I focus on how the interplay between the repressive regime and democratisation struggles define and shape each other.

In Moldova, the number of dual citizens has risen exponentially in the last decades. Before annexation, many saw Russia as granting citizenship to – or passportizing – large numbers in Crimea. In this talk, I interrogate why these communities engage with dual citizenship and how this intersects, or not, with identity. I explore how and why Russian citizenship was largely and surprisingly absent in Crimea before annexation, compare it with the strong presence of Romanian citizenship in Moldova, and explore how far identity helps explain this difference.

Ethnic inequalities in health are entrenched and persistent in the UK. This seminar explores the role of racism, experienced over the life course, in structuring ethnic inequalities in health in later life. Anchored around key tenets of life course theory, this presentation will discuss findings from recent and upcoming publications that centre racism as the root cause of ethnic inequalities, exploring life course mechanisms that pattern stark ethnic inequities in later life.

Modern Asia is built upon a web of close relationships running between and within business and politics: the connections world.

The connections world has enormous advantages in promoting economic development, but also comes with significant social costs and fallibilities.

The article presents a general account of xenophobic discrimination in international law. It shows that the dominant grounds-based approach to addressing xenophobic discrimination as (i) racial discrimination and (ii) discrimination based on nationality or citizenship, fails to capture what is wrong about xenophobic discrimination. Likewise, the suggestion to address xenophobic discrimination via a dedicated ground like foreignness may also fail given the unique character of foreignness as in turn constructed by other grounds.