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The resurgence of civic duties | Simon Reid-Henry

Civic duties are essentially the ways in which citizens agree to abide by the rules and to contribute to the life of a national society. About Simon Reid-Henry "I am a research professor at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo, an honorary professor of historical and political geography at Queen Mary, University of London, a civil society advocate and a writer. I am a 2011 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. My research applies an interdisciplinary focus to the making and application of political, economic, technical and legal forms of knowledge and their consequences for political thought and practice. My work has been recognized for its methodological innovation, conceptual rigour, and empirical breadth via a number of academic fellowships and awards." Key Points • The pandemic revived the language of civic duty as governments asked citizens to act for the common good, offering a lens to study how collective action is mobilised. • Comparative research in France, Norway and the UK shows that civic duty is culturally framed and shaped citizens’ compliance. • Lockdowns exposed the constant negotiation in liberal democracies between collective needs and individual freedoms, demonstrating that obedience relies on persuasion more than coercion. • Global disparities in vaccine access highlighted how duties operate at multiple scales, underscoring the need for shared responsibility to tackle future crises such as climate change.

What is "prejudice" ? | Jessie Munton

I think prejudice is best conceptualized as a phenomenon that can be supported by a whole range of mental states that will include beliefs, habits, emotions, and also attentional dispositions. About Jessie Munton " I'm an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. I'm also a fellow at St John's College, and Director of Studies for Philosophy there. My core areas of research are philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of psychology. I also enjoy thinking and writing about philosophy of psychiatry. I am a 2023 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. I've become increasingly interested in what I think of as negative epistemology: how do we evaluate ignorance, forgetting, or the failure to undertake inquiry or collect evidence? Some of my other research is in philosophy of perception." Key Points • Prejudice is sustained not only by beliefs and emotions but also by entrenched habits of attention that filter what we notice or ignore. • Because those attentional patterns are conditioned by media, spaces and other people, prejudice is simultaneously individual and societal. • We can still be held responsible for unconscious biases, since we choose many of the influences that shape our habitual focus. • Lasting change depends on shifting shared cues through inclusive education, diverse personal relationships and similar interventions so that different people and evidence become salient to us all.

Global Public Investment | Simon Reid-Henry

The world today is overburdened with challenges that supersede the boundaries of nation states, and therefore of national governments, to address on their own. About Simon Reid-Henry "I am a research professor at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo, an honorary professor of historical and political geography at Queen Mary, University of London, a civil society advocate and a writer. I am a 2011 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. My research applies an interdisciplinary focus to the making and application of political, economic, technical and legal forms of knowledge and their consequences for political thought and practice. My work has been recognized for its methodological innovation, conceptual rigour, and empirical breadth via a number of academic fellowships and awards." Key Points • The post-war aid framework is outdated and too top-down to tackle border-spanning crises like climate change and pandemics. • Global Public Investment offers a universal, rules-sharing model where every country contributes according to capacity and gains an equal voice in decisions. • Financing should rely on robust sources such as environmental levies and national budget lines, rather than the seldom-met 0.7% target. • International support must move from a charity narrative to one of mutual interest, recognising shared responsibility for global public goods.

On ignorance and forgetting | Jessie Munton

I'm interested in the beliefs that we're not forming, the evidence that we're not attending to or using, the belief states that perhaps we form. What I think of as negative epistemology is the project of coming up with resources that let us say a bit more about that. About Jessie Munton " I'm an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. I'm also a fellow at St John's College, and Director of Studies for Philosophy there. My core areas of research are philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of psychology. I also enjoy thinking and writing about philosophy of psychiatry. I am a 2023 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. I've become increasingly interested in what I think of as negative epistemology: how do we evaluate ignorance, forgetting, or the failure to undertake inquiry or collect evidence? Some of my other research is in philosophy of perception." Key Points • Negative epistemology shows that the beliefs we never form and the evidence we ignore can be as significant as the beliefs we hold. • Attention shapes knowledge, and sustained inattention to accessible evidence turns ignorance into an epistemic fault. • Ignorance is permissible only when the missing information is either irrelevant or out of reach; neglecting obvious, important questions makes it illegitimate. • Forgetting and structured ignorance actively manage cognitive load but can also reinforce social power by keeping certain knowledge unseen.

The empire of democracy | Simon Reid-Henry

"How do we understand, as it were, our era of democracy, which I argue began really as recently as the 1970s from previous eras, and what is it that is fundamentally at the core of the democracy we live in today?" About Simon Reid-Henry "I am a research professor at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo, an honorary professor of historical and political geography at Queen Mary, University of London, a civil society advocate and a writer. I am a 2011 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. My research applies an interdisciplinary focus to the making and application of political, economic, technical and legal forms of knowledge and their consequences for political thought and practice. My work has been recognized for its methodological innovation, conceptual rigour, and empirical breadth via a number of academic fellowships and awards." Key Points • Democracy is not a fixed inheritance but a continually reinvented system shaped by each era’s social and institutional needs. • The economic and political upheavals of the late 1960s and 1970s, including the collapse of Bretton Woods, set the conditions for today’s globalised democratic order. • Modern democracy must constantly balance freedom with equality, a tension that becomes acute when growth falters or institutions erode. • Democracy’s survival depends on active stewardship; assuming it will always muddle through risks its gradual decay.