• Week 8: Politics of the Anthropocene

    I was not particularly keen to bring up climate change again since we already waded through the gore that is national INDCs.  I was inclined to offer a foray into LSE’s excellent series of retrospective evaluations that they conducted for … Continued

  • Week 7: Using evidence in decision making

    This week, we turn to the ubiquitous role that evidence plays in the decision making process.  Quite obviously, societal decisions do not simply depend on the weight of the evidence and can turn on ideology, norms, beliefs, history and path dependence, … Continued

  • Week 6: Terrorism, technology and privacy

    For the last couple of weeks, even before it was brought up in the supervision, I have wanted to tackle healthcare policy, but I think we have to continue our discussion on privacy given recent unfortunate events in Paris.  It … Continued

  • Week 5: Foresight and the future of cities

    The main project operating under the UK Foresight programme at the moment is on the Future of Cities, which is intended to look at ‘the opportunities and challenges facing UK cities over the next 50 years’.  They have recently published a somewhat … Continued

  • Week 4: Net neutrality

    This has been a very busy week for net neutrality on both sides of the Atlantic (and beyond).  Most notably the European Parliament voted down various proposals to retain a strong form of net neutrality, which was almost lost amidst coverage of … Continued

  • Week 3: How will countries implement their INDCs on climate change?

    This week, we are meant to be looking at institutions, so I thought that the national INDCs (shorthand for the unwieldy ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contribution’) for the upcoming COP-21 (short for the 21st conference of the parties to the UN … Continued