
Each year, the Centre hosts public and by-invitation events dedicated to global governance, international law and institutions, and political theory and ethics. This page contains information for independent Centre events as well as the Centre’s pioneer ‘Research Conversations’ seminar series. More information on this seminar series can be found: here.
All times are listed in the UK time zone.
UPCOMING EVENTS 2025
Pluriversal Reconciliation: Political Violence and Onto-Epistemic Dialogue
A ‘Research Conversations’ seminar series event with Camilo Ardila
Wednesday, 19 February, 14:00-15:00
Arts Seminar Room 8
At this research conversation, organised by CGLG and CPCS, we will be discussing Camilo Ardila’s book proposal. Tony Lang will be the discussant, and everyone’s feedback would be much appreciated. Camilo’s book will bring together three bodies of literature: pluriversal politics, political reconciliation, and democratic theories and makes two arguments. The first argument is that what ultimately informs different conceptions of political reconciliation is a tension between two philosophical strands: onto-epistemic monism and onto-epistemic pluralism. Monism, on the one hand, understands political reconciliation based upon a logic of exclusion/inclusion in relation to a dominant world, more particularly, European modernity/coloniality. Pluralism, on the other hand, understands political reconciliation as an ongoing dialogue and mediation across multiple worlds with their own onto-epistemic assumptions and partially interconnected by power relations at the global level. The second argument is that pluriversal politics can generate a distinct conception of political reconciliation by explicitly revealing the ontological and epistemic dimensions of political violence and inter-cultural dialogue, labelled as “pluriversal reconciliation.”
The book illustrates these arguments with three case studies : 1) the recognition of rivers and ancestral territories as victims of war-related harms in the work of the Truth Commission and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia as a result of an inter-cultural dialogue with Indigenous and Afro-descendant cosmologies; 2) the role of ubuntu in the work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in conversation with Christian ethics and human rights discourses; 3) the resurgence of Indigenous sovereignty in resistance to institutional practices and norms of modern statehood in settler colonial societies like Australia and Canada.
The Politics of International Norms
Academic talk presented by Anette Stimmer
Hosted by ILCR
Thursday, 27 February, 13:00-14:30
Old Seminar Room, South Street

Homeland Insecurity: The Rise and Rise of Global Anti-terrorism Law
Academic talk presented by Professor Connor Gearty
Friday, 28 February, 18:00
Parliament Hall
In the decades following the 9/11 attacks, complex webs of anti-terrorism laws have come into play across the world, promising to protect ordinary citizens from bombings, hijackings and other forms of mass violence. But are we really any safer? Has freedom been secured by active deployment of state power, or fatally undermined?
In his recent book, the title of this lecture, Conor Gearty unpacks the history of global anti-terrorism law, explaining not only how these regulations came about, but also the untold damage that he claims they have wrought upon freedom and human rights. Ranging from the age of colonialism to the Cold War, through the perennial crises in the Middle East to the exponential growth of terrorism discourse compressed into the first two decades of the 21st century, the coercion these laws embody is here to stay. The ‘War on Terror’ was something that colonial and neo-colonial liberal democracies had always been doing―and something that is not going away. Anti-terrorism law no longer requires terrorism to survive. And with Israel’s recent destruction of Gaza it is clear that for it and its Global North supporters, anti-terrorism no longer needs law of any sort to claim legitimacy.
Egypt’s Role, Identity and Foreign Policy in a River of De-Nile
A ‘Research Conversations’ seminar series event with Julie Kaarbo and May Darwich (University of Birmingham)
Wednesday, 12 March, 11:00-12:00
Arts Seminar Room 8

The weaponisation of ‘responsibility’ in space security
A ‘Research Conversations’ seminar series event with Haley Rice
Wednesday, 19 March, 11:00-12:00
Butts Wynd 20
Global Constitutionalism
A ‘Research Conversations’ seminar series event with Filippo Costa Buranelli
Wednesday, 16 April, 11:00-12:00
Online
PAST EVENTS

Book Talk: “Fabricating Homeland Security: police entanglements across India and Palestine/Israel”
Academic talk presented by Dr Rhys Machold.
Wednesday, 5 February, 11:30-13:00
Arts Seminar Room 8
The Contested Use of Straatraison/Raison d’Etat Against the Backdrop of the Gaza Conflict
With Antje Wiener.
Thursday, 28 November, 16:00-17:30
School V


International Negotiations in Times of Crisis
With a backchannel negotiator.
Tuesday, 26 November, 17:30-19:00
Arts Lecture Theatre
Global Constitutionalism & IR Theory
A ‘Research Conversations’ seminar series event with Tony Lang (St Andrews).
Wednesday, 20 November, 11:00
Arts Seminar Room 9
More information on this and other ‘Research Conversations’ seminar series events can be found: here.


International Justice at a Crossroads? Sir Geoffrey Nice KC
In conversation with Professor John Hudson (St Andrews).
Tuesday, 8 November, 17:00-19:00
Parliament Hall
Reception to follow discussion.
Global Governance in Hard Times
A ‘Research Conversations’ seminar series event with Benjamin Faude (University of Glasgow).
Wednesday, 6 November, 11:00
Arts Seminar Room 4
More information on this and other ‘Research Conversations’ seminar series events can be found: here.

Forests of Refuge Book Launch
A discussion of Forests of Refuge: Decolonizing Environmental Governance in the Amazonian Guiana Shield by Ariadne Collins (St Andrews).
Wednesday, 30 October, 15:15-18:00
School I
Book available: here.
Conceptualizing ‘The Planetary’ in Environmental Governance
A ‘Research Conversations’ seminar series event with Rob Fletcher (Wageningen University).
Wednesday, 30 October, 11:00
Arts Seminar Room 4
More information on this and other ‘Research Conversations’ seminar series events can be found: here.
The Ukraine War and European Foreign Policy
Jörg Terhechte (Leuphana), Bernhard Blumenau (St Andrews), Muireann O’Dwyer (St Andrews)
Wednesday, 12 October, 17:00-18:30
School I

Feminist Sovereignty
A ‘Research Conversations’ seminar series event with Ruth Houghton (Newcastle University).
Wednesday, 25 September, 11:00
Old Union Diner
More information on ‘Research Conversations’ seminar series events can be found: here.