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We are delighted to introduce you to our new academic staff who have joined the department this week.

Dr Mathew Coakley (Teaching Fellow, Political Theory)

Dr Coakley studied Social and Political Sciences at King's College Cambridge before doing an MA in War Studies at King's College, London and then a PhD in Political Theory at New York University. Prior to coming to PAIS he taught at the London School of Economics & Political Science. His primary areas of research are political theory and ethics, with interests in epistemology and the philosophy of economics.

Mathew has published on the value of political legitimacy, the ethics of sweatshops and the problem of how to add up interests / make welfare comparisons, with his first book - "On the Structure of Moral Theories" (forthcoming Bloomsbury 2015) - looking at the options for how to simultaneously morally evaluate both agents and the actions they undertake, and the impact institutions might have on such evaluations.

Dr Georg Loefflmann (Teaching Fellow, US Foreign Policy and American Politics)

Between 2011 and 2014 Dr Georg Loefflmann undertook his PhD studies at PAIS. His PhD thesis is titled: "The Fractured Consensus - How competing visions of grand strategy challenge the geopolitical identity of American leadership under the Obama presidency," and was supervised by  and .

Previously, Dr Loefflmann has studied International Relations in Germany at the FU Berlin, the Humboldt-University, and the University of Potsdam, with a focus on German and European foreign and security policy and constructivist research perspectives.

His research focuses on the geopolitical contextualization and representation of national identity and how this informs the formulation of grand strategy and foreign and security policy.

Dr Briony Jones (Assistant Professor, International Development)

Briony Jones is joining PAIS from swisspeace, an Associate Research Institute of the University of Basel, Switzerland where she has worked since 2011. She in fact studied at PAIS as an undergraduate and has since then completed a MA and PhD in International Development at the University of Manchester. Developing her research and teaching focus on International Development Briony first worked as a Lecturer in International Development at Manchester and then moved to Switzerland where she has been based in Political Science.

Briony will be teaching on the core MA in International Development module 'Theories and Issues in International Development'. She will be continuing her research work focused on the intersection between development, peacebuilding and transitional justice with a special interest on the politics of intervention, knowledge production, citizenship and political identities at times of transition. She has worked on the case studies of Uganda, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Cote d'Ivoire, specialising in qualitative research methodologies.

Dr Chris Rossdale (Teaching Fellow, International Relations)

Dr Chris Rossdale previously lectured at Royal Holloway and City University London. He has a PhD from PAIS, and in 2014 was awarded the BISA Michael Nicholson Prize for best thesis in International Studies.

His research sits at the intersection between international relations theory and the study of resistance, looking at the ways in which our understandings of international politics shift when we begin from the perspective of radical social movements. His PhD thesis looked at the ways in which anti-militarist social movements can help us rethink (and better resist) the concepts and politics of security and militarism. Dr Rossdale is currently in the process of developing a new research project which seeks to interrogate the role of political solidarity in the international system.

Dr Reiko Shindo (Teaching Fellow, International Security)

Before joining PAIS, Dr Shindo was based at the University of Tokyo (Japan) as an Assistant Professor in the Graduate Program on Human Security. She received her PhD from Aberystwyth University (UK).

Reiko’s research is situated at the intersection between politics and geography. Most of her work derives from a general interest in citizenship and community. In particular, she examines how the ambiguous boundaries of citizenship are transforming conventional meanings of politics and the space of political community. Reiko has been committed to interdisciplinary research by drawing on works mainly from citizenship studies, migration studies, border studies, and critical International Relations.

PAIS Honorary Professor, Her Excellency Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, President of Malta, has recently met with the UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, and has also addressed the UN Assembley in New York.

On 24 September, UNESCO Director-General met H.E. Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, President of the Republic of Malta, in New York, in the context of the UN Summit on Sustainable Development and the 70th session of the UN General Assembly‎.

President Coleiro Preca spoke of the importance of bridging exclusion, living together and dialogue in all societies today. She underlined the activities of the newly launched Foundation for Well-Being in Society, in Malta, with a focus on providing spaces for children of all backgrounds to exchange and share.

Whilst addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals summit, attended by more than 150 world leaders, President Marie Louise Coleiro Preca said "Global solidarity and a renewed commitment to safeguard human dignity and rights were needed now more than ever before."

“As leaders, we cannot look away. As leaders, we must be steadfast champions of social, economic, and political inclusion. As leaders we must always give voice to the shared truths of our global community. As leaders, we must become advocates for peace and the wellbeing of all,” the President said.

Although, at times, this might not be the most popular position “we must be bold, and defend the rights of vulnerable people wherever they are found”. She added “human dignity, integrity and freedom should be at the heart of our concerns”.

Her Excellency also attended the opening of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York for the speech of Pope Francis the First.

PAIS has made significant gains moving up four places to 3rd in the rankings in Politics in .

We are also placed at No 1 for the student experience in the entire Russell Group of elite departments.

Head of Department, Professor Nick Vaughan-Williams is delighted with the rankings.

Professor Vaughan-Williams said: “This latest ranking in The Times/Sunday Times is yet further evidence of PAIS’ position as one of the UK’s leading Politics Departments. Research and teaching excellence are at the heart of who we are and what we stand for.

Staff and students should feel deservedly proud of this result. With a newly refurbished building and an ambitious agenda for the future, we look
forward to building on this success in 2015/16 and beyond.”

Thank you to all our students and staff for our continued success.

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Burkina Faso, which has been experiencing a political transition since October 2014 when former President Compaoré saw his attempts to remove term limits from the constitution fail and had to leave the country, is experiencing turmoil again, less than four weeks before scheduled elections to return the country to a constitutional order.

On 16 September, members of the Presidential Guard (RSP) disrupted the transition by kidnapping transition authorities, and attempting to impose their chief to lead the country. This was faced by massive resistance from the population, in the capital Ouagadougou but also in many towns and cities across the country.

PAIS PhD student Eloïse Bertrand provides analysis of this popular resistance on .

You can read Eloïse's articule here:

is an open access collection from Punctum books.

Edited by Suzanne Conklin Akbari, it includes a piece by PAIS Professor entitled 'Writing by Accumulation'.

The aim of the book is not to offer advice on how to write, but for academics to share stories of how they actually write, with techniques, rituals, frustrations and horror stories.

"The contributors range from graduate students and recent PhDs to senior scholars working in the fields of medieval studies, art history, English literature, poetics, early modern studies, musicology, and geography. All are engaged in academic writing, but some of the contributors also publish in other genres, includes poetry and fiction. Several contributors maintain a very active online presence, including blogs and websites; all are committed to strengthening the bonds of community, both in person and online, which helps to explain the effervescent sense of collegiality that pervades the volume, creating linkages across essays and extending outward into the wide world of writers and readers."

The book is free to download, but physical copies are available to buy. is a small, independent publisher that only produces open access material, and relies on sales and donations to enable projects such as this one.