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UCL Uncovering Politics

UCL Political Science

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The podcast of the Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy at University College London (UCL). Through this podcast we explore key themes of contemporary politics and spotlight some of the fantastic research that takes place within our department.
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UCL Political Science Events

UCL Political Science

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Catch up with any event you have missed. The public event podcast series from UCL Political Science brings together the impressive range of policy makers, leading thinkers, practitioners, and academics who speak at our events. Further information about upcoming events can be found via our website: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/political-science/political-science
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Artificial Intelligence is hurtling us into an unknown future. Will it pollute our infosphere, reinforce biases, or even be an existential risk? Or will AI help us solve the energy crisis, revolutionise healthcare and even eliminate the need for work? Perhaps all of these? On Steering AI, we talk to leading academic experts at the cutting-edge of this increasingly powerful and pervasive technology, hearing their views on the benefits and how to steer around the risks. The first step to mitig ...
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50 Years of Life in Britain

Centre for Longitudinal Studies – UCL Institute of Education

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Join us as we celebrate 50 years of the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70), which has been following the lives of 17,000 people born in Great Britain during a single week in 1970. This podcast series takes listeners on a journey through British social and political history, and explores BCS70’s numerous contributions to British science and society. Across six episodes, the series tells our study members’ story and charts the first five decades of the study. Produced by Fresh Air Production
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The COP 29 conference once again highlighted divergences between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries with regards to states’ responsibility to limit their carbon emissions and transition away from fossil fuels. According to many poorer countries, restrictions on fossil fuel production and consumption would constrain economic and social developme…
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Beowulf is the product of a profoundly religious imagination, but the significance of the poem’s Christianity has been downplayed or denied altogether. The Word-Hoard Beowulf: A Translation with Commentary (Angelico Press, 2023) is the first translation and popular commentary to take seriously the religious dimension of this venerable text. While g…
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For over six centuries, Chaucer has epitomized poetic greatness, though more recent treatments of The Canterbury Tales’ lively and often risqué style have made his name more synonymous with bawdy humor. But beyond his poetic achievements, Chaucer assumed various roles including those of royal attendant, soldier, customs official, justice of the pea…
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From the late Roman Empire onwards, monasteries and convents were a common sight throughout Europe. But who were monasteries for? What kind of people founded and maintained them? And how did monasticism change over the thousand years or so of the Middle Ages? Andrew Jotischky traces the history of monastic life from its origins in the fourth centur…
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By the fifth and sixth centuries, the bread and circuses and triumphal processions of the Roman Empire had given way to a quieter world. And yet, as Shane Bobrycki argues, the influence and importance of the crowd did not disappear in early medieval Europe. In The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton UP, 2024), Bobrycki shows that although dem…
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Histories of Britain composed during the "twelfth-century renaissance" display a remarkable amount of literary variety (Latin varietas). Furthermore, British historians writing after the Norman Conquest often draw attention to the differing forms of their texts. But why would historians of this period associate literary variety with the work of his…
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The period from the Mamlūk reconquest of Acre (1291) to the Ottoman siege of Constantinople (1453) witnessed the production of a substantial corpus of Middle English crusade romances. In English Literature and the Crusades: Anxieties of Holy War, 1291–1453 (Cambridge University Press, 2024) Dr. Marcel Elias places these romances in dialogue with mu…
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The story of King Henry VIII, a man who married six times only to execute two of those wives, is part of Great Britain’s national and international identity. Each year, millions of people walk around the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace and Hever Castle, plus many other historical sites, taking in and hoping to glean some sense of the man and …
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Jana Byars talks to Erika Graham-Goering of the University of Oslo about Lordship and the Decentralized State in Late Medieval Europe (Oxford University Press, 2025), which was edited by Graham-Goering, Jim van der Meulen, and Frederik Buylaert. The origins of modern European states are often traced back to the expansion of royal and princely autho…
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Artificial intelligence is increasingly being touted as a game-changer across various sectors, including public services. But while AI presents significant opportunities for improving efficiency and effectiveness, concerns about fairness, equity, and past failures in public sector IT transformations loom large. And, of course, the idea of tech mogu…
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There is a common misconception that the Jewish religion does not believe in an afterlife. While it’s true that Judaism is focused on actions, intentions and thoughts in this life, it also believes in an afterlife, and has a variety of points of view about what happens after death. Today’s guest, Professor Joseph Stern, will discuss Maimonides’ uni…
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The relationship between religion and violence is a subject of enduring debate. Religion is often portrayed as a force for peace and compassion. Yet history is littered with instances where religious actors have been involved in conflict. What conditions make religious organizations more likely to engage in violence? And what lessons can policymake…
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This seminar demystifies the secret world of consultancy and lobbying. It is an industry which has grown hugely in recent decades, and become an inevitable part of modern policy making. But lobbyists and lobbying are frequently misunderstood. To explain what lobbyists do we have four very senior practitioners, with a wide range of experience betwee…
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Adam Franklin-Lyons joins Jana Byars to talk about Shortage and Famine in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon (Penn State Press, 2022). In the late fourteenth century, the medieval Crown of Aragon experienced a series of food crises that created conflict and led to widespread starvation. Adam Franklin-Lyons applies contemporary understandings of comp…
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Parliament is at the heart of democracy—it’s where voters are represented, laws are debated, and key decisions are made. But who really controls what gets discussed and how time is allocated? In the UK, that power lies overwhelmingly with the government, leaving most MPs with little say over what they debate. That seems odd—after all, parliament is…
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Democratic elections ideally involve discussions of the challenges and opportunities facing the nation, and of the policies that might best address them. Yet real-world elections rarely seem to fulfil those hopes. One of the alternative realities found in many countries today is the politics of clientelism, where candidates effectively buy votes by…
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Queen of Sorrows: Plague, Piety, and Power in Late Medieval Italy (Cornell University Press, 2024) by Dr. Bianca Lopez takes an original approach to both late-medieval Italian history and the history of Christianity, using quantitative and qualitative analyses of a remarkable archive of 1,904 testaments to determine patterns in giving to the Virgin…
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Today I talked to Alec Goldstein about Maimonides on the Book of Exodus (Kodesh Press, 2019). Rabbi Moses son of Maimon, known in Hebrew as Rambam and in English as Maimonides, is one of Judaism’s most influential and enduring figures. His works have shaped Jewish thought for centuries, combining legal precision, philosophical brilliance, and profo…
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Getting convicted of a crime can have lots of further, harmful consequences, perhaps you’ll lose your home or job. Yet those consequences don’t fall equally: some might go back to something like their previous lives after imprisonment, where others can’t. And often that has to do with wider social injustices. So, is that unfair? Ought the state mak…
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Mine Is The Golden Tongue: The Hebrew Sonnets Of Immanuel Of Rome (Centro Primo Levi, 2023) contains the first known sonnets written in Hebrew. Their author is Immanuel of Rome, an intensely studied yet little-known 14th-century poet, who adapted the quantitative meter of Arabic and Hebrew poetry from al-Andalous to the syllabic meter of romance po…
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A captivating journey of the expansive world of medieval travel, from London to Constantinople to the court of China and beyond. Europeans of the Middle Ages were the first to use travel guides to orient their wanderings, as they moved through a world punctuated with miraculous wonders and beguiling encounters. In this vivid and alluring history, m…
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Rewriting Buddhism: Pali Literature and Monastic Reform in Sri Lanka, 1157–1270 (UCL Press, 2020) is the first intellectual history of premodern Sri Lanka’s most culturally productive period. This era of reform (1157–1270) shaped the nature of Theravada Buddhism both in Sri Lanka and also Southeast Asia and even today continues to define monastic i…
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While premodern kabbalistic texts were not chronicles of historical events, they provided elaborate models for understanding the secret divine plan guiding human affairs. Hartley Lachter analyzes innovative kabbalistic doctrines, such as the idea of reincarnation and the notion of multiple successive universes, through which Jewish mystics sought t…
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Famous today for the shops lining its sloped street, the Ponte Vecchio is the last premodern bridge spanning the Arno River at Florence and one of the few remaining examples of the once more prevalent urbanized bridge type. Drawing from early Florentine chronicles and previously unpublished archival documents, The Ponte Vecchio: Architecture, Polit…
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In today’s episode, we delve into the complex and often misunderstood world of autocratic leadership. At first glance, it might seem like authoritarian rulers wield unchallenged power, free to govern without opposition. After all, the term "autocrat" stems from the Greek for "self-rule." But is that really how it works in practice? A fantastic new …
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Majapahit was Indonesia, and Southeast Asia’s, largest empire. Centered on the island of Java, Majapahit commanded loyalty from vassals across the archipelago: on Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, and even the Malay Peninsula, including a tiny village called Tumasik–known today as Singapore. The empire lasted for around 230 years, from its founding in 129…
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David J Collins, SJ joins Jana Byars to talk about Disenchanting Albert the Great: the Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Magician (Penn State Press, 2024). Albert the Great (1200–1280) was a prominent Dominican friar, a leading philosopher, and the teacher of Thomas Aquinas. He also endorsed the use of magic. Controversial though that stance would h…
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Meet the speakers Sir Rob Behrens was the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman between 2017 and 2024. Prior to this, he held roles including Complaints Commissioner at the Bar Standards Board, Secretary to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, and Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (Office of the Independent Adjudicator) in Eng…
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Shannon Gayk joins Jana Byars to discuss her new book. Apocalyptic Ecologies: From Creation to Doom in Medieval English Literature (University of Chicago Press, 2024) is a meditative reflection on what medieval disaster writing can teach us about how to respond to the climate emergency. When a series of ecological disasters swept medieval England, …
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As Donald Trump prepares for his second presidential inauguration on 20 January, speculation is rife about the policies he will pursue. Yet, just as crucial as his agenda are the powers of the office itself. What resources will he command? What constraints will shape his decisions? To explore these questions, we turn to one of the foremost experts …
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We’re familiar with the idea that history shapes contemporary politics, but what about the reverse? How do today’s political dynamics influence the way we remember the past? In this episode, we explore a compelling study that examines this question in the context of Ukraine—a country caught between conflicting historical narratives from Russia and …
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An understanding of Dante the theologian as distinct from Dante the poet has been neglected in an appreciation of Dante's work as a whole. That is the starting-point of Dante the Theologian (Cambridge UP, 2022). In giving theology fresh centrality, the author argues that theologians themselves should find, when they turn to Dante Alighieri, a compe…
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This book introduces, edits and translates the Dattātreyayogaśātra, a Sanskrit text on yoga composed in about 1200 CE in South India. It teaches four types of yoga practice but devotes the majority of its 193 verses to haṭhayoga, which it divides into two varieties, one which consists of the eight auxiliaries first taught by Patañjali and one which…
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In The Fate of the Jews in the Early Islamic Near East: Tracing the Demographic Shift from East to West (Cambridge UP, 2022), Phillip Lieberman revisits one of the foundational narratives of medieval Jewish history--that the rise of Islam led the Jews of Babylonia, the largest Jewish community prior to the rise of Islam, to abandon a livelihood bas…
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Monstrous Fantasies: England's Crusading Imaginary and the Romance of Recovery, 1300-1500 (Cornell University Press, 2024) by Dr. Leila Norako asks why medieval romances reimagining the crusades ending in a Christian victory circulated in England with such abundance after the 1291 Muslim reconquest of Acre, the last of the Latin crusader states in …
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Social media plays a significant role in shaping political debates and, some argue, even influencing election outcomes. Politicians increasingly use platforms like X (formerly Twitter) to communicate directly with the public and run their campaigns. However, this unfiltered communication can sometimes spread misinformation or undermine democratic v…
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One week after the US elections, Donald Trump has claimed victory, securing the presidency, the Senate, and almost certainly – though not yet confirmed – the House of Representatives as well. This sweeping win over Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party has ignited widespread discussion: what went wrong for the Democrats, and what lies ahead for bo…
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During the early medieval Islamicate period (800–1400 CE), discourses concerned with music and musicians were wide-ranging and contentious, and expressed in works on music theory and philosophy as well as literature and poetry. But in spite of attempts by influential scholars and political leaders to limit or control musical expression, music and s…
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In recent years, policing in England and Wales has appeared to be trapped in a cycle of crisis. From high-profile scandals to criticisms of operational standards, concerns about the police’s role and conduct have intensified. Perhaps most shockingly, a serving police officer was convicted of the murder of Sarah Everard, a tragedy that underscored t…
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- Meet the speakers - Dr. James D. Boys is a Boston-based analyst focused on US political history. He was most recently a Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Strategic Studies at Tufts University’s Fletcher School. An expert on US politics and grand strategy, he frequently shares his insights as an on-air commentator on CNN, BBC News, Sky N…
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In fourteenth-century Italy, literacy became accessible to a significantly larger portion of the lay population (allegedly between 60 and 80 percent in Florence) and provided a crucial means for the vernacularization and secularization of learning, and for the democratization of citizenship. In Dante's Education: Latin Schoolbooks and Vernacular Po…
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Recorded 24 October 2024. A new government has been in power in Westminster since July. In our Policy & Practice mini-series, Priorities for the new UK Government, we will explore key issues on which the government is—or ought to be—focusing its attention. In the first event in this miniseries, we discuss the Government's central focus: economic gr…
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In Experimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. Hannah Weaver examines the mediaeval practice of interpolation—inserting material from one text into another—which is often categorised as being a problematic, inauthentic phenomenon akin to forgery and pseudepigraphy. Instead, Weaver promot…
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Challenging the standard view that England emerged as a dominant power and Wales faded into obscurity after Edward I's conquest in 1282, Reimagining the Past in the Borderlands of Medieval England and Wales (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Georgia Henley considers how Welsh (and British) history became an enduringly potent instrument of polit…
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Most things you 'know' about science and religion are myths or half-truths that grew up in the last years of the nineteenth century and remain widespread today. The true history of science and religion is a human one. It's about the role of religion in inspiring, and strangling, science before the scientific revolution. It's about the sincere but e…
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The vibrant red sandstone temples of India's Deccan Plateau, such as the Pattadakal temple cluster, have attracted visitors since the eighth century or earlier. A UNESCO World Heritage Site and the coronation place of the Chalukya dynasty, Pattadakal and its neighboring sites are of major historical importance. In Shiva's Waterfront Temples: Archit…
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There have been longstanding calls for reparations to address the profound injustices of colonialism and compensate for the vast extraction of resources from colonized nations. However, with few recent exceptions, these demands for reparations have largely been ignored by the former colonial powers. So, what comes next? Over the past two decades, r…
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It is often assumed that classical Sanskrit poetry and drama lack a concern with the tragic. However, as Bihani Sarkar makes clear in Classical Sanskrit Tragedy: The Concept of Suffering and Pathos in Medieval India (I. B. Tauris, 2021), this is far from the case. In the first study of tragedy in classical Sanskrit literature, Sarkar draws on a wid…
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Dr. Dennis Wuerthner’s Poems and Stories for Overcoming Idleness: P’ahan chip by Yi Illo (U Hawaii Press, 2024) is the first complete English translation of one of the oldest extant Korean source materials. The scholar, Yi Illo (1152–1220), filled this collection with poetry by himself and diverse writers, ranging from Chinese master poets and Kory…
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Augustine believed that slavery is permissible, but to understand why, we must situate him in his late antique Roman intellectual context. Slaves of God: Augustine and Other Romans on Religion and Politics (Princeton UP, 2024) provides a major reassessment of this monumental figure in the Western religious and political tradition, tracing the remar…
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