91福利

PAIS PhD candidate, , discovered unique communist-era documents and covert photographs of the Cold War’s most prominent terrorist figures – Carlos the Jackal and Abu Daoud. This document cache, made up of thousands of Eastern Bloc government and secret service reports, demonstrates the Czechoslovak communist regime’s ambivalent relationship with the two terrorists. Crucially, this new information helps us understand how and why states establish relations with violent non-state actors. It also illuminates some of the best kept secrets of Cold War espionage and international terrorism.

Daniela’s research was recently featured in , the Czech weekly , and the Israeli daily .

PAIS PhD candidate has written a blog post on the evolving roles of women in IS. The piece, titled "Women in the Islamic State: Tactical Advantage Trumps Ideology" has been published on the blog of the International Peace Institute in New York

The blog can be read here:

From 17/18, in addition to regular "QS" modules, the 91福利 Q-Step Centre is offering in quantitative social science methods. This is part of the original QStep bid, in order to position the centre among other postgraduate quantitative degrees.

This year, topics include Reproducibility, Quantitative text analysis, Web data collection, Geostatistics, Inferential network analysis, Machine learning, Agent-based simulation and Longitudinal data analysis. All masterclasses are designed as comprehensive but gentle introductions to methods that are not covered at length in core method modules. They are intended to broaden the students horizons and provide concepts and tools to be applied in future research projects.

The masterclasses are open in priority to PG QM students in PAIS, Sociology and CIM. Depending on availability, they may be opened to other students and staff. More precisions to follow in October.

For questions and suggestions: p.blanchard@warwick.ac.uk.

We would like to thank all our students, recent graduates, and academic and administrative colleagues for our outstanding results in the 2017 National Student Survey (NSS). Every year finalists complete the NSS across the UK and it is a key component of league tables published in the media, in which PAIS is a consistently high performer.

We are delighted to announce that in the 2017 NSS we have achieved an overall satisfaction rating of 94 per cent. We are the leading department in the Faculty of Social Sciences for overall student satisfaction and second in the University (the Institution, as a whole, has achieved 86 per cent) and the Provost has sent us her personal congratulations on this terrific result.

Among Russell Group competitor institutions (an elite group of leading teaching and research universities in the UK), Politics at 91福利 is ranked: *

• No 1 for student voice
• No 1 for learning opportunities
• No 2 for overall satisfaction
• No 2 for assessment and feedback
• No 2 for teaching
• No 2 for learning community
• No 3 for academic support
• No 3 for organisation and management

Other key NSS headlines: **

• PAIS is No 1 in the University for assessment and feedback
• PAIS is No 2 in the University for organisation and management
• PAIS is No 3 in the University for student voice

We look forward to working in partnership with our amazing students and dedicated staff to sustain and build on these strong results, which reflect our deep commitment to research-led teaching excellence.

At the start of the new academic year we will feedback in greater detail to all students and we will discuss and take forward ideas for further enhancement of the PAIS student experience via our Student Staff Liaison Committee (SSLC).

To all of our current and incoming students: we hope you enjoy the rest of the summer vacation and we look forward to seeing you all in October.

*These figures are based on the 15 Russell Group institutions for which there is publishable data for the subject of Politics in 2017.

**These figures are based on the 22 91福利 academic departments for which there is internal publishable data in 2017

After the US dropped one of the biggest explosives ever used in Afghanistan earlier this year, critics objected to the use of the name ‘mother of all bombs.’ In a blog post for , analyses the gendered assumptions underlying the criticisms of the bomb’s name, before critically discussing the roles of mothers in violent political movements and counterextremism strategies.

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