Schedule of face-to-face re-induction events

Year 2 Undergraduate Re-Induction

This session is for all Year 2 undergraduates and is an introduction to the second year of study. You will receive updates on new SPIR staff and will have the opportunity to ask questions.

Location- Staff Offices

Advisor meetings - to be confirmed

SPIR will send you details of your advisor by the end of Welcome Week  and you will be invited to schedule a one to one meeting with your advisor.

Welcome Week 2024: Everything you need to know about the 'Year of Elections'

Date: Thursday 19 September, 14:00-15:30 (reception to follow from 15:30 in the Graduate Centre foyer)

Venue: Peston LT, Graduate Centre

Tickets: Eventbrite

In 2024, almost half of the world’s population will head to the polls as at least 64 countries hold national elections. In this Welcome Week event to mark the start of the 2024/25 academic year, we bring together a panel of experts from across Queen Mary to dive into the twists and turns of the elections in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, South Africa, Britain, France and the United States of America.

What do these elections tell us about the resilience of democracy around the world? How have the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the rise in the cost of living, the Climate Emergency and rising support for the far-right affected global politics? How has social media, AI and the spread of disinformation affected political discourse? Above all, we will ask what these elections can tell us about those yet to come including the presidential election in the United States in November.

Join us on Thursday 19 September at 2pm to meet some of the Queen Mary academics who will be teaching you over the next three years and your fellow freshers!

Our panel will include:

• Innocent Batsani-Ncube is Lecturer in African Politics and an expert in how African countries’ relationship with China and other emerging powers from the Global South impact African domestic politics. In May 2024, he acted as an official observer at the landmark elections in South Africa.
• Françoise Boucek is Visiting Research Fellow and taught European and comparative politics at Queen Mary between 2003 and 2018. Her research focuses on French politics and elections, representative democracy in Europe and the governance and economics of the European Union.

• Philip Cowley is Professor of Politics and a respected broadcaster and political commentator. He has co-authored books on the 2010, 2015 and 2017 General Elections and is the author of Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box: 50 Things You Need to Know about British Elections. He is the voice of election night on BBC Radio 4 and broadcast through the night as Labour defeated the Conservative Party and ended 14 years in Opposition.

• Chris Moffat is Senior Lecturer in South Asian History and an expert in violence, modernity and revolutionary politics in India and the importance of ‘the past’ in Pakistan’s politics and public life.

The panel will be chaired by:

• Madeleine Davis is Reader in Politics and an expert in the history of the left in Britain and the development of socialist political thought in the twentieth century. Her current research focuses on the development of the ‘New Left’ from the 1960s, including its relationship with the Labour Party in Britain, its grassroots mobilisation and agitation and the contribution that New Left thinkers made to British political thought.

Important Information:

This event will start at 2pm in the Peston Lecture Theatre in the Graduate Centre, which is number 18 on this map of Queen Mary’s Mile End campus. You can find it on What3Words at: https://w3w.co/fixed.reader.apples. This event will be followed by a reception with food and drink which all attendees are welcome to attend.