Sexual violence in conflict once again captured the international spotlight earlier this month when gynaecologist, Dr Denis Mukwege, and human rights activist, Nadia Murad, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Responding to sexual violence grew exponentially in importance on international policy agendas over the past decade, with clear implications for operational and programmatic practice across conflict-affected contexts.

The politics of fiscal policy in Europe since the financial crisis poses an important puzzle to political economy scholarship. Political parties campaigning on and implementing austerity policies were installed and maintained in office despite – or even because of – economic policy choices imposing widespread costs. Canonical theories in political science, and in economics, provide little help in understanding these dynamics.

Stephanie Hare has been working with CognitionX, a start-up providing expertise about Artificial Intelligence (AI), on the topic of AI ethics. She will present the approach she and her CognitionX colleagues have been developing on how to think about AI ethics, including 'why ethics', a taxonomy and definitions, and why AI ethics is important for companies to consider as a core concept when acquiring and managing data, building and maintaining customer trust, and anticipating regulatory trends.

While previous works have extensively studied how authoritarian governments use state violence to suppress political expression and deter collective action, little is known about the effect of violence and its effects in democratic countries. Does the experience of state repression polarize views against the democratic regime? Does it foster or suppress political participation? Who is more likely to be affected? We address these questions by exploring the impact of police violence during the 2017 Catalan independence referendum on the subsequent regional election scheduled two months later.

Since 2014, the changing nature of threats to international peace and security, in particular, the threat posed by terrorism, has demanded a more rapid pace of change in policy-making at the United Nations and has, in part, led to wider institutional reform within the organization aimed at developing a One UN approach to counter-terrorism.