War, Peace & the In Between

In this episode we continue the conversation started in Episode 3, in which we introduced the importance of regional responses to the pandemic. We compare responses from regional organisations around the globe, including the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Organisation of American States (OAS), and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), to demonstrate how each regional organisation has used its unique areas of expertise to support responses to the pandemic. Our guests also outline the findings of a mapping exercise looking at the effects of Covid-19 around governance and accountability of responses in Southern Africa and the continent. We ask how these responses might change governance going forward, and how each organisation is collaborating with other organisations and actors in the international system.Featuring special guests Dr Kathryn Nash and Hannah den Boer from the University of Edinburgh alongside Nicholas Maple from the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Power-sharing is one of the most commonly used mechanisms for peace, but also one of the most controversial. In this episode, Dr Kevin McNicholl and Dr Dawn Walsh give an introduction to power-sharing and how it can deliver stability, peace and good governance while simultaneously working for the inclusion and meaningful participation of a range of actors, and outline some key debates around power-sharing.Featuring Dr Kevin McNicholl, Post-Doctoral Researcher on the Political Settlements Research Programme at the University of Edinburgh. and Dr Dawn Walsh, Assistant Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin.

In this special data focus episode, we talk about the birthday paradox - a phenomenon stemming from the collision of human intuition and probability theory - and how a team of PeaceTech researchers encountered a real-world application of these ideas in a database of global peace agreements.Featuring special guests Dr Sanja Badanjak, Chancellors Fellow in Global Challenges at Edinburgh Law School and associate of the PSRP, and John Allison, Senior Analyst Developer with the University of Edinburgh Information Services.