Glyn Ford is a former member of the European Parliament and author of Talking to North Korea (2018) and Picturing the DPRK (2024) North Korea’s nuclear programme is the symptom of weakness, not strength. Pundits confuse David with Goliath. The reality is that Pyongyang is comprehensively out-spent, out-gunned and out-resourced by its southern alter ego. Seoul’s military budget dwarfs…
Matthew Hurst is a doctoral student at the University of York researching the Sino-British negotiations over the future of Hong Kong during the 1980s and ’90s. The past can be a poor indicator of the future. Anyone looking to history books as if they were a crystal ball is likely to find themselves disappointed. In…
Co-authors Richard Wilding and Elisabeth Dodinet have spent their careers working with intangible cultural heritage, Richard as a writer and filmmaker in the Middle East and Elisabeth as an archaeo-ethno-botanist conducting research on aromatic plants. Speaking via Zoom from an office in the town of AlUla in northwest Saudi Arabia, three young women talk excitedly…
Andrew Ward is a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy and is currently a Hudson Fellow at Oxford University’s Changing Character of War Centre where he is researching the early Cold War and its relevance for today’s power dynamics at sea. Building a navy is insufficient to become a sea power. By some measures, the People’s…
Sue Byrne is an independent researcher specialising in Mongolia. Who would have thought that a twenty-six year old British Army Officer would be the first European to enter Urga in February 1912 mere weeks after the Bogd Khan’s declaration of independence? The young man was Charles Binsteed, who had taken Extra Regimental Leave beyond empire…
Bolor Lkhaajav is an international relations researcher and writer Over the last decade, Mongolia has experienced tremendous political, economic, and social transformation. The 2024 parliamentary election will be a turning point in Mongolia’s democracy, governance, and how Ulaanbaatar engages the world in an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment. The 2024 parliamentary election will be one of…
Douglas Carruthers, born in London in 1882, was an explorer and naturalist who went onto become a member of the Royal Central Asian Society (precursor to the RSAA). As a boy he was desperate to be able to explore Africa, Central Asia and the ruins of the ancient world, all of which he managed to achieve before he was twenty-six. As a young man he travelled through Arabia, represented the British Museum while travelling across Africa, followed the course of the Congo River and explored Central Asia.
Kathryn Rae is the Founder and Managing Trustee of the Wild Camel Protection Foundation and Dr Anna Jemmett is their ecologist with a PhD in the study of the Wild Camel The critically endangered wild camel, Camelus ferus, хавтгай, 野骆驼, inhabits the desert ecosystems of Mongolia and China. In China it survives in the Gashun Gobi, Lop…
Tsogtgerel Nyamtseren is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Studies, Mongolia and a former member of the Mongolian Armed Forces On 6 February 2023, a devastating earthquake struck southern and central Türkiye. In response to the disaster, many nations sent teams of rescue professionals to save lives in a race against time. The Mongolian military forward medical team…
Sarah Edgcumbe is a doctoral researcher with the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews “There are no Roma in Iraq”. This was the response to an interview request I sent a non-Iraqi humanitarian professional working in Iraq in 2021. Iraqi Gypsies and Roma have been narratively erased from the Iraqi landscape during…
