Director's Lecture Series: "The Year of the Big Vote"
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2024-02-29

Full title: "The Year of the Big Vote: International relations after the 2024 polls"

More than 2 billion people in 50 countries will be invited to vote this year. That is almost a third of the world’s population. It is also perhaps the biggest simultaneous democratic exercise known in recent times.  

In a climate where misinformation and fake news has become rife, where the appetite for populism remains strong and where our ability to think critically about the world around us is persistently challenged, where are we heading and what will global relations look like, once nearly a third of the world has voted?  

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About the speakers:

Professor Leslie Vinjamuri, Director of the US and Americas programme at Chatham House, Chair of the faculty of the Queen Elizabeth II Academy and Professor of International Relations at SOAS. 

Dr Subir Sinha, Director of the SOAS South Asia Institute with expertise in South Asian politics which includes populism and democracy, political ecology, agrarian political economy, social movements and state-society relations in development. Subir is also leading an independent public inquiry into the violence between South Asian communities that took place in Leicester last September.  

Professor Stephen Chan OBE, at SOAS, was an international civil servant involved with several key diplomatic initiatives in Africa, helping to pioneer modern electoral observation, and continues to be seconded to diplomatic assignments today.  

Anthony Dworkin, is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, working on human rights, democracy, and international order. He has written several papers on multilateralism in an era of strategic competition as well as the politics of international law and justice. He has also worked extensively on European relations with North Africa. He is a visiting lecturer at the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po.

Chair: Professor Adam Habib, Director of SOAS University of London and a Professor of Political Science.