This panel brings together two scholars working on contemporary Black urban politics and history. After summarizing their current book projects, Dark Concrete: Black Power Urbanism and the American Metropolis, and Urban Power, Black Mayors: Managing Inequality in Kurt Schmoke's Baltimore, the panellists will discuss twentieth and twenty-first century Black urban politics and history more broadly.

Tareq Baconi is author of 'Hamas Contained: A History of Palestinian Resistance' (Stanford University Press: 2018, 2024). He was the senior analyst for Palestine/Israel at the International Crisis Group, based in Ramallah. His writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, the New York Times, among others. He is president of the board of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network.

This event is going to be live online. For registration: https://forms.office.com/r/dFY3nRh6KJ

The abolition of slavery remains a relatively new concept in human history and scholars from all religious traditions have attempted to navigate the religious and ethical questions raised by the historical acceptance of the practice. In this seminar, Haroon Bashir explores how scholars promoting abolition in the name of Islam transformed the debate around Islam and slavery. The seminar explores how abolitionism became the hegemonic position within contemporary Islamic thought and provides a genealogy of ‘Islamic abolitionist’ thought.

The fallout from the Trump-Zelensky meeting last Friday continues to strain Ukraine’s relations with the United States, creating uncertainty regarding the viability of continued Western military support for Ukraine. With growing Republican skepticism toward military aid for Ukraine and broader transatlantic commitments, Europe faces the challenge of filling potential gaps in security assistance.

Many explanations for the rise of populism date its modern incarnation back to the Great Financial Crisis, when arguably a period of deregulation triggered risk taking that brought the global financial system crashing down. But equally it will be hard to foster faster growth unless the UK’s financial services grow faster and more effectively serve their purpose. So how does the regulator in the middle, the Financial Conduct Authority, get the balance right between consumer rights and enabling innovation?

In the UK election, one domestic policy issue loomed large above everything else: the NHS. But when finances are tough, NHS improvement will prove a challenge unless we can improve NHS productivity. And despite new investment, the new government must avoid the peril of its last term in office when rising personal satisfaction with the NHS failed to translate into an appreciation that the system was on the mend.