Current Affairs

Anyone in hope of elucidation on Brexit this week will have been a bit disappointed, even by recent standards. With submissions to the High Court providing no killer arguments either side – and both sides firmly stating that any loss will be challenged up to the Supreme Court and an immigration debate that has sunk to the […]

Prime Minister Theresa May is determined to take Britain on a course to Brexit, but only six months ago she said it wouldn’t be in the country’s interest to do so. Mrs May, then Home Secretary, said in a pro-Remain speech in April 2016: “I believe it is clearly in our national interest to remain […]

Sarah Glück and Charoula Tzanakou[i]   “Researchers love what they do. It is not entirely clear to us that the systems in which we work love us.” (Bratislava Declaration of Young Researchers)   How can we attract young students to a career in science and how can we retain them? Those were the leading questions […]

A Brexiteer in the BBC Question Time audience last Thursday compared the EU to the Soviet Union. It’s an entirely false and unfounded comparison. There is absolutely no resemblance between the EU and the USSR. Such comparisons are reckless, childish and nonsensical. It shows no understanding or respect for those people who truly suffered and […]

There is nothing else like it on the internet: the unique and growing portfolio of over 300 graphics and articles continuing to present the case every day for Britain to remain in the EU. I started the Reasons2Remain Facebook Community Campaign on Monday 4 April 2016. With a small team of supporters, for the following 11 […]

As academic coordinator of the European Union in International Affairs (EUIA) conference that took place in Brussels this May, Lisanne Groen introduced Young Researchers’ Masterclasses, which saw senior scholars give feedback on papers and presentations of early career researchers, and provided them with useful networking opportunities. In future, running the masterclasses before the conference, as […]

Now we’re back into the normal flow of things, I’ve been giving more talks about Brexit, and writing pieces for other sites. As I decried in my previous posts here (and here), a major challenge for pursuing Brexit is that there is no clarity on either side about what the objective might be. That in turn makes it almost impossible […]

So it turns out that Usherwood’s Law is simply that things can always get worse. It’s not quite my childhood dream, but (appositely) it could be worse. Since publishing The Brexit Clusterf**k earlier on, I’ve had lots of feedback on Twitter, essentially boiling down to “you forgot some other things”. Since I’m apparently on a roll here, […]

UPDATED: read a second installation here, after all your comments.   Summer is over: winter is coming in the world of Brexit. As politicians return from their sojourns in the sun, they open up their emails and briefings to find that things are going about as badly as they could. I’m writing this at the end […]

With the UACES 2016 conference coming to a close, Viviane Gravey and Anna Wambach offer some suggestions for postgraduate researchers on how to make the most of a conference once it has finished. They recommend maintaining the momentum, both for one’s research and network, and planning ahead for future conference opportunities. The run-up to a […]