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Diplomacy of Disinformation and Emerging Global (Dis)Order: What is Going On? Laurie Bristow in conversation with Julie Newton
Thu 22 May 202522 May 2025 
06:0007:30 PM
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Description

The geopolitical situation has changed drastically in the last several months. The news feed is overwhelming and disorienting: the rules on which world diplomacy has operated since the end of WWII seem to have evaporated. The transatlantic allies are at odds, while the victims of aggression are bullied by the leadership of ‘the free world’. Flows of disinformation, often fuelled by generative AI, cause havoc and obstruct the formation of rational political discourse perpetuated in the theories and practices of modern democracies. Can we imagine the future order in this context? As we rapidly crash through previous boundaries, what will the parameters of this new era be? What will it mean for relations between Russia, the UK, the European Union, the United States, and Ukraine? 

Join Sir Laurie Bristow, former British Ambassador to Russia (2016-2020) and Afghanistan (2021, during the fall of Kabul to the Taliban), and Dr Julie Newton, Research Fellow at the University of Oxford specialising in EU-Russia relations, for a conversation that will address the roots, present, and possible futures of geopolitical entanglements and the global order.

Speakers
Laurie Bristow
Sir Laurie Bristow, appointed President of Hughes Hall, Cambridge in 2022, was a British diplomat for 32 years.  He was Ambassador to Afghanistan during the fall of the Republic to the Taliban in 2021,  the UK’s Ambassador to Russia from 2016 to 2020, and Deputy Ambassador to Russia from 2007 to 2010.  He was Ambassador to Azerbaijan from 2004 to 2007.  Sir Laurie regularly writes and comments on Russia and national and international security issues. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute, a Senior Associate Fellow of the European Leadership Network and Visiting Professor at LSE Ideas.
Julie Newton

Based at Oxford University, Dr Julie Newton is Principal Investigator (Director) of the University Consortium, funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York, bringing together universities in the US, the EU and formerly in Russia. Newton is also a Research Fellow at the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, where her research focuses on Russian politics and Russia-US-EU relations. Newton holds a BA from Princeton University, a master's from Columbia University, and a DPhil from Oxford. Newton is an Associate Professor at the American University of Paris; in the US, she is a Visiting Professor at Colorado College; and in Russia, she was a regular lecturer for the MGIMO-MGU International Master’s Program in Post-Soviet Politics. Besides published articles, her books include: Russia, France, and the Idea of Europe (Palgrave, 2003), Institutions, Ideas, and Leadership in Russian Politics (Palgrave, 2010)

Location

5a Bloomsbury Square London WC1A 2TA

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