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.
‘Help!’ When I was grading a paper for a gifted graduate student from India this week, I found this provocative quotation from an article on the leading Indian theologian M.M. Thomas (1916-1996): ‘Human efforts to solve human frustrations on human merits are bound to be a failure. Ideologies which dispose of specific evils propound evil […]
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To many outside observers, Ireland is, and always has been, a bastion of Catholic faith and power. Reality is rather different. In this ‘Weekly Briefing’ I look at the history and politics of Catholicism in Ireland and at the impact child sex-abuse has had on the spiritual life, public profile and political standing of the […]
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On 21 January 2021, a double suicide bombing in Baghdad claimed the lives of more than thirty people. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, their first in Baghdad since 2018 and, as such, a deliberate statement of their resurgence in the region and renewed challenge to the international order in the 21st century. 21 January […]
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Let’s be honest, alliteration – or the deliberate use of repetitive sounds, syllables and words (even if spelled differently) – can be a wretched thing! Like many people of my age, I grew up with the frightful ‘She sells seashells on the seashore’ and so was pleased to find this engaging alternative on the BBC […]
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In Big is Beautiful: Debunking the Myth of Small Business (The MIT Press, 2018) authors Robert Atkinson and Michael Lind reject prevailing wisdom and provocatively reclaim size as a significant factor in business success. To some, COVID-19 has justified that claim, with small businesses struggling to survive and on-line giants gorging themselves on the profits […]
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Beware. If ever left alone in your study while you answer the door, take a call, or brew us a pot of tea, I am likely to betake myself to your bookshelves, often the best loved (and surely most interesting) part of many a home. Here you express yourself, reveal your passions and longings, and, […]
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As a lawyer, I am very aware that false assumptions and terminological confusion surround the terms ‘rule of law’ and ‘civil society’. We need to be clear what they mean. I have lectured on them often, not least at conferences a decade or so ago in Milan (sponsored by the Instituto Italiano della Donazione) and […]
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Ten-years ago last December, the 26-year-old market-stall holder Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight in Sidi Bouzid, a town in central Tunisia. It was an act of utter desperation and bitter frustration at the corruption which had wracked his country for more than half a century. Like a match to dry kindling, Bouazizi’s self-immolation triggered bushfires […]
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On 23 June 2016, 52% of the British electorate voted in a referendum to leave the EU. After four years of tense negotiation and heated debate, of grandstanding and brinkmanship in Westminster and Brussels (and in the Parliaments of EU member states), the terms of the UK’s withdrawal were confirmed. The land border between Northern […]
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It was late-August 1976 when I first visited Durham Cathedral, poet Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Half church of God, half castle ‘gainst the Scot’. The pillars of the Norman nave (built 1093-1133) took my breath away. As round as they are tall (6.6m), with deep cut geometrical patterns, the pillars seem to set a standard for […]
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