Professor Michael Dillon is a historian and biographer specialising in the history, politics and society of China Shanghai has had an extraordinary history. The squalor and sleaze of the early twentieth century have more or less disappeared although pockets of sub-standard housing in the midst of ultra-modern high-rise buildings reflect newer manifestations of inequality. Treaty…
Dr Nick Miller is a Professor of Intelligence Studies at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina My doctoral research was shaped by my experience working within the US Department of Defense, where I managed portfolios related to China and North Korea. Across both cases, I encountered a persistent problem: the quality of intelligence collection…
Jonathan Manullang is a postgraduate student at the University of Edinburgh and a member of the Basic Income Earth Network The Martabe Gold Mine in North Sumatra, operated by PT Agincourt Resources, is frequently presented as a flagship of extractive-led development in Indonesia. Yet, when examined through a gendered lens, its impacts appear far more…
Bianka Tibayan Venkataramani is a Coordinator of the Global Governance and Security Centre at Chatham House War today is defined by advanced capabilities – from cruise missiles and stealth submarines, to drone warfare and the weaponisation of artificial intelligence. It is therefore hard to imagine that one of the most strategically significant naval bases in…
Dr Kuat Akizhanov is Deputy Director of the CAREC Institute and a Visiting Lecturer at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan Over the past three decades, Central Asia has undergone a profound transformation. Emerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan were rapidly integrated into a global economic system…
Sumit Sharma Sameer is an author, producer and host of Ink & Insights, and Dr Pankaj Adhikari is a political scientist and policy advisor based in Melbourne, Australia. Fresh from being named on the TIME100 list of the most influential people of 2026 by Time magazine, Prime Minister Balendra Shah has stepped onto the global…
Claire Thomas is an award-winning photojournalist, fine art photographer, and writer Nine-year-old Dastan, the son of a Kazakh eagle hunter, rode his pony beside me, cantering effortlessly without a saddle. He laughed at my attempts to pat my pony’s neck – a gesture the animal was clearly unaccustomed to. For Dastan, horses are not objects…
Michael Neale was born in Kashmir, India and worked for Reuters in Asia and Africa This piece offers a reflective exploration of Wabi Sabi: The Wisdom in Imperfection by Nobuo Suzuki and Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence by Andrew Juniper, drawing out their shared vision of wabi sabi as both philosophy and way…
Dr Rónán Lee is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at Loughborough University and the author of Myanmar’s Rohingya Genocide: Identity, History and Hate Speech “Places forgotten by maps” is how Rohim Ullah describes the sprawling complex of refugee camps where he lives alongside more than one million of his fellow Rohingya. It is a…
Simit Bhagat Is an award-winning Filmmaker, Journalist, musician and cultural archivist based in Mubai, India Some histories survive not in official archives, but in songs. In the Bhojpuri-speaking regions of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in northern India, folk music has long carried an emotional record of departure, labour, longing, and return. These songs were…
