果冻传媒

's latest article, titled "The conspiracy theorists are right. Research shows nations really do go to war over oil" for has been published by the Washington Post.

We found that the decision to interfere was dominated by the interveners’ need for oil – over and above historical, geographical or ethnic ties.

Military intervention is expensive and risky. No country joins another country’s civil war without balancing the cost against their own strategic interests and what possible benefits there are.

We found countries producing lots of oil or those with higher reserves (and considerable ) were more likely to attract military support. Most often this was to preserve oil prices on international markets. Indeed, there were on average more interventions in periods when there were only a few big oil producing countries and thus reduced competition (and more stable prices).

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, an Assistant Professor and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow here in PAIS, has recently co-authored a paper, titled ‘“Oil above Water", Economic Interdependence and Third-Party Intervention,’ for the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

Alongside researchers from the Universities Portsmouth and Essex, they have for the first time provided strong evidence for what conspiracy theorists have long thought – oil is often the reason for interfering in another country’s war.

Throughout recent history, countries which need oil have found reasons to interfere in countries with a good supply of it and, the researchers argue, this could help explain the US interest in ISIS in northern Iraq.

The researchers have modelled the decision-making process of third-party countries in interfering in civil wars and examined their economic motives.

They found that the decision to interfere was dominated by the interveners’ need for oil over and above historical, geographical or ethnic ties.

The full paper is available, '"Oil above Water", Economic Interdependence and Third-Party Intervention', .

The paper has received considerable press coverage, the articles can be viewed below:

Matthias Kranke, a PhD student in PAIS, published a review article of two edited volumes in Millennium: Journal of International Studies in 2014. The volumes which Matthias reviewed are:

• Best, Jacqueline and Paterson, Matthew (eds) (2010) Cultural Political Economy, London: Routledge.
• Shields, Stuart, Bruff, Ian and Macartney, Huw (eds) (2011) Critical International Political Economy: Dialogue, Debate and Dissensus, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

The editors in turn decided to respond to the review. Now, their responses, as well as Matt's rejoinder, have very recently been published in Millennium. They can be viewed on the links below.

Review article: <>

Response by Shields, Bruff & Macartney: <>
Response by Best & Paterson: <>
Rejoinder: <>

The January 2015 issue of the Review of International Studies (RIS) features two articles on the politics of materiality by PAIS researchers Dr and Dr .

The RIS is the flagship journal of the British International Studies Association (BISA) and published by Cambridge University Press.

Both articles explore the insights and limitations of the so-called ‘new materialist’ turn in social sciences for the discipline of International Relations (IR), and showcase cutting-edge conceptual work in PAIS’ International Relations and Security and Political Geography research groupings.

Squire's article, ‘Reshaping critical geopolitics? The materialist challenge’, draws attention to the limits of an approach that emphasises the representational, cultural, and interpretive dimensions of geopolitics, while acknowledging the difficulties of an ontological shift to materiality for many scholars of critical geopolitics.

Vaughan-Williams' article, ‘New materialisms, discourse analysis, and International Relations: a radical intertextual approach’ (co-authored with Tom Lundborg, Stockholm University), examines the implications of new materialist thought for a more expansive understanding of ‘discourse’ in IR, but warns against recycling the language/matter distinction.

The latest issue of the RIS 41(1) can be accessed here:

Dr. Renske Doorenspleet and Dr. Philippe Blanchard are associated with a .

This funding of £1 million aims to bridge the gap between mathematical and social sciences with a new doctoral scholarship programme starting in 2015/16. 果冻传媒 is one of only 14 institutions to be given the investment, which will fund 15 PhD students over the next five years, who will work across both disciplines, using quantitative methods to understand new sociological issues. This will be another opportunity for PAIS to collaborate with three of . Each of the fifteen PhD students enrolled over the next three years will be co-supervised by a staff from these departments, and one from PaIS, Sociology, Psychology or Business.

This is another step in enhancing PAIS' methodological expertise, after the . In the long term, 果冻传媒's QStep will pursue the training of stats-skilled social science doctoral students.