World Children’s Day: digital futures for children – children’s rights under pressure in the digital environment

Contributor(s): Professor Ronald Krebs, Katharine M Millar, Dr Luca Tardelli, Dr Boram Lee | In January 2025, Donald Trump returned to the White House. The ensuing months have been a dizzying blur for American foreign and security policy. Unprecedented U.S. import tariffs have been threatened, reversed, and imposed. Allies have been lectured and harangued, while adversaries have been warmly welcomed. Trump dressed down Ukraine’s president, embraced Russia’s, and then did a U-turn. He stood by Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, backed its escalation against Hizballah in Lebanon, and joined in bombing Iran, but then pressured Israel into a peace deal. His administration, which seemed to see China as a rival to American dominance, cultivated allies in the Pacific and launched a trade war, but has also signalled a pullback from East Asia and a renewed focus on the Western hemisphere. Amidst the turmoil of the Trump administration, is there an emerging logic to US foreign and security policy? Is a Trump doctrine taking shape?

Contributor(s): Kyriakos Pierrakakis | Join us for a discussion with Kyriakos Pierrakakis, Greece's Minister of the Economy and Finance, on the key challenges shaping the country’s future. From public debt and inflation to growth and innovation, to education reform and the digital transition, the conversation will explore how past reforms and new policies that can support Greece’s economic resilience and competitiveness.

Contributor(s): Professor Deborah James FBA, Dr Miranda Sheild Johansson, Dr Johanna Mugler, Dr Robin Smith | In this panel discussion, anthropologists working on redistribution and tax will present the findings of—and interrogate each other on—two recent books: Clawing Back: redistribution in precarious times, and Anthropology and Tax: ethnographies of fiscal relations. Anthropologists view redistribution in unusual ways. In exploring how people pay for what they need and want, we consider how allocative processes operate beyond those tried and tested in the heyday of the welfare state. Typically, incomes are earned through wage work, or people revert to benefits. Yet austerity has reduced welfare systems in the North, while those in the South are under-developed. To make ends meet, people use both ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ resources, payments and economic relationships, creating larger networks of redistribution. They seek new ways to supplement meagre incomes, combining work, welfare and debt. But, as Deborah James shows, combining these three income sources is not straightforward: it requires canny intervention by local advisers on the one hand and householders on the other. Meanwhile, contributions, tributes and tithes, as shown by Miranda Sheild Johansson, Robin Mugler and Robin Smith, enable taxation beyond the exchequer. Their focus on fiscal systems looks at how the sharing, extraction, and flow of resources not only produce economic realities but also shape relations of belonging, dependence, and exclusion, as well as social and philosophical categories regarding work, and value.

Contributor(s): Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter | America is undergoing rapid demographic change. By the mid-21st century, European Americans, long the country’s largest demographic group, will be roughly equal in numbers to Hispanic, African, and Asian Americans. Join us as Anne-Marie Slaughter considers the possibilities and challenges this shift poses for the Atlantic Hemisphere and the future of transatlantic relations.

Contributor(s): Dr Iris Berger, Dr Luke Hecht, Dr Karen Kovaka, Matt Phelps | Britain's wildlife has been under pressure for centuries. Many of the large mammals that once inhabited these islands were driven to extinction long ago. In the twenty-first century, insect populations have collapsed by around three quarters. Is there any way back? Join us to hear stories from the frontline of the fight to restore wild Britain. We'll discuss the ethics of conservation in the real world. When should we intervene and when should we leave "wild nature" alone? When conflicts between economic and environmental interests emerge, how should they be handled? How can scientists involve local communities in conservation to avoid tensions and build coalitions? Does a focus on large animals lead to undervaluing tiny animals, like insects, or can we help both at once? And since wild nature involves a lot of suffering, do we have to choose between prioritizing animal welfare and prioritizing biodiversity? These questions will be brought to life with vivid examples.