A specialist consultancy providing bespoke advice and creative solutions for complex cultural, ethical, and religious issues in contemporary geopolitics.
Oxford House Research publishes weekly briefing papers on topical and global issues authored by associates and a range of external contributors. Members receive these by email each week.
Olympic judges are a (usually!) friendly reminder of a serious truth: we live in critical times. From the Greek word krisis, judgments of every kind face our private lives and the global community. Unfriendly critics stalk our schools and universities, haunt the low dives of media manipulation, and enveigle their way into popular culture and […]
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The American military presence in Syria began on 22 September 2014[1] primarily as a response to the rapid expansion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).[2] The US-led coalition aimed to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIS, which had seized large territories across Iraq and Syria, posing a significant threat to regional stability and […]
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On the day Iran goes to the polls (June 28) and Democrat America recovers from last night’s presidential debate, we are reminded in two contrasting ways that 2024 is a year of elections, albeit staged, planned, reported and recorded in a host of different ways. The National Democratic Institute in Washington DC[1] lists 64 national […]
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Setting the scene Life and faith are mysteries. We enter and experience both through factors beyond our understanding and control. Our parentage and DNA, our appearance and abilities, our predispositions and cultural formation are among life’s ‘givens’, it seems as if by chance. We sometimes – no, often – wish it were not so. Hence, […]
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If, by any chance, you have noticed Oxford House’s ‘Weekly Briefings’ have been far from weekly in the past two or three months, I am both grateful and (a little) embarrassed. The simple fact is – apart from a three-week encounter with a new COVID variant (that prevented an important trip to China) – I […]
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Recent events in Israel and Gaza have shocked the world. No reasonable, moral person can feel anything but outrage and disgust. To Jews, here is another ‘massacre of the innocents’; to Palestinians of every kind, another reason to hate and hope against hope to flee Gaza or build a new homeland. To many outsiders, here […]
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I remember being haranged by an ‘evangelical’ atheist in Oxford University a few years ago who came at me with the surprisingly unnuanced claim: ‘Religion is the cause of everything that is wrong with the world today!’ Then – and, indeed, now – I can’t help wondering if the immoderate passion he demonstrated might not […]
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Duncan Smith, Fraud and Corruption: Cases and Materials (2022) To those of us working on the front-line, Duncan Smith’s latest book Fraud and Corruption: Cases and Materials (Springer, 2022) is an invaluable resource. As Deputy Head of Fraud Investigations at the European Investment Bank (EIB) in Luxembourg, Smith is well-placed to write on the challenges […]
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Pope John Paul II (1920-2005; r. 1978-2005) was, like his predecessors John XXIII (1881-1963; r. 1958-1963) and Paul VI (1897-1963; r. 1963-1978), committed to the Catholic Church’s involvement in – if not direction of – international affairs. To that end, he and his staff cultivated and (usually) retained close connections with numerous governments and government […]
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Immediate issues have magnetic power. It can be hard to resist their pull. Pressing matters in international relations dominate minds and media coverage: North Korean missile tests, meetings between Xi Jinping and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken (b. 1962), Vladimir Putin’s clash with Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin (b. 1961), the catastrophic loss of […]
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