According to Dr Dunkelberg, the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been premised from the perspective of Israel as the established state and Palestine as the non-state entity. In this keynote, he discusses a different possible reading of international legal history. A reading which revisits the traditional histories of Mandatory Palestine and the creation of a Palestinian State in full awareness of their coloniality in order to offer new understandings that challenge the hegemonic consensus. About the Speaker: Dr. Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg is a Lecturer in International Relations at King's College London's Department of War Studies. He specialises in history of international law, from a postcolonial and Global-South-centred approach. He is a contributing editor at the international law blog Opinio Juris.

According to Casey Michel, for years, Western foreign lobbyists have worked as foot-soldiers for the most authoritarian regimes around the planet. In the U.S. alone, the foreign lobbying industry is now worth billions of dollars. And it's no longer just PR shops or traditional lobbying shops. Instead, the industry now encompasses former officials, consultancies, law firms, think tanks, and even universities - all working on behalf of foreign dictatorships. In his address to the IIEA, Casey Michel discusses how this industry grew so quickly, and with so few paying attention? What kinds of threats does it present to democracy and what can be done? About the Speaker: Casey Michel is the Director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation. He is the author of American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History, and the forthcoming Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World, both published by St. Martin's Press. His writing has appeared in Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, among many more outlets. He currently lives in New York.

'The multiple implications of population decline and aging' Claus Vistesen, Chief Eurozone Economist for Pantheon Macroeconomics, in conversation with Dan O’Brien, IIEA Chief Economist.

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) aims to make digital markets fairer and more contestable, and to provide new opportunities for startups and investors in the EU. Eoghan O’Neill, Senior Policy Officer in the Platforms Policy and Enforcement Directorate of the European Commission presents the new DMA obligations for the world’s largest digital platforms. He outlines how these obligations may translate into opportunities for startups and investors. Amongst other features of the DMA, he examines the DMA’s implications for the interoperability of messaging apps, third party app stores, and how it empowers users to take advantage of data portability.

Ireland has over recent years become an increasingly important international financial centre. Trillions of euros of assets from overseas are either administered or domiciled in Ireland, often using complex financial structures involving multiple jurisdictions. Yet while successive Irish governments have been keen to reap the benefits of this ever more prominent role in the global financial system, far less attention has been paid to the multifaceted risks that accompany such significant flows of international capital. This keynote address to the IIEA considers the security threat from illicit finance, the extent to which existing responses are able to counter that threat, and what measures are required to make Ireland a genuinely hostile environment for money linked to criminal, corrupt and malign actors overseas. About the Speaker: Dr Alexander Chance is Head of Policy and Research at Transparency International (TI) Ireland, where he runs its programmes on anti-corruption and anti-money laundering. He is also a Senior Fellow with the Azure Forum for Contemporary Security Strategy and an Associate Fellow with RUSI’s Organised Crime and Policing Group. Alexander previously served in the UK National Crime Agency in operational, strategy and management roles focused on transnational organised crime, including five years working in South America, and has consulted for the UN and various other organisations. He obtained his PhD from Trinity College Dublin, where his research examined the relationship between organised crime, high-level corruption and peacebuilding in post-war Mozambique.

On 13 January 2024, Taiwanese voters went to the polls and elected Lai Ching-Te of the Democratic Progressive Party. Amongst the key points of contention in this election was Taiwan’s future relations with China and how to navigate an increasingly contested geopolitical environment. This expert panel reflects on Taiwan’s election and explores the potential implications its result may have for Taiwan, for the Indo-Pacific, and for the globe. About the Speaker: Nick Marro is the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Lead Analyst for global trade. Based in Hong Kong, he has spent over a decade in Asia analysing trade policy. Nick also concurrently helps to lead the EIU’s award-winning coverage of China and Taiwan. In that role, he shapes the EIU’s view on China-Taiwan relations, including how to prepare for and mitigate the risks attached to cross-Strait tensions. Nick previously conducted trade research in Beijing with the US-China Business Council. He graduated from the University of Virginia with degrees in Foreign Affairs and Chinese and holds graduate certification from the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing University Centre for Chinese and American Studies. Dr. Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy is Affiliated Scholar at the Department of Political Science of Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Associated Research Fellow at the Institute for Security & Development Policy (ISDP Stockholm), Head of the Associates Network at 9DASHLINE and Consultant at Human Rights Without Frontiers in Brussels. Based in Taiwan, Zsuzsa is Adjunct Assistant Professor at the National Dong Hwa University in Hualien. Between 2008 and 2020 Zsuzsa worked as a political advisor in the European Parliament. In May 2019 she published her book, Europe, China, and the Limits of Normative Power. Zsuzsa is a regular commentator in international media outlets.

Traditionally, in the UK, women have been more likely than men to vote Conservative, whilst men have been more likely than women to vote Labour. Yet in recent general elections, this gender gap in voting behaviour has reversed, with women now leaning to the left of men in their vote choice. As the gender gap has shifted, parties have increasingly recognised the importance of women voters and have competed for their votes. The lead up to the 2024 General Election is no exception and has seen women voters at the fore of the election campaign, with the ‘Stevenage Woman’ – a fictional key voter – at the centre of Labour Party strategy. In this presentation, Anna Sanders explores the key issues in the run-up to the 2024 UK General Election, and their implications for gender differences in voting behaviour. About the Speaker: Anna Sanders is an Assistant Professor in British Politics at the University of York. Her research brings together the areas of gender, policies and voting behaviour, with a core interest in how policy offers shape gender gaps in vote choice. She has published on these themes in the Journal of European Public Policy, the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, and the British Journal of Politics and International Relations. She is currently working on a monograph, ‘Winning Women’s Votes: Gendered Policies and Campaigns in Britain’.

The 1949 Statute of the Council of Europe requires Member States to accept the principles of the rule of law and of the enjoyment by all persons within its jurisdiction of human rights and fundamental freedoms, on pain, in cases of serious violations, of expulsion. One of the principal means for achieving greater unity and safeguarding the signatory States’ common heritage was and is the European Convention on Human Rights and its innovative mechanism for the collective enforcement of individual rights. 75 years on, President O’Leary discusses what sort of challenges the European Court of Human Rights is facing as it seeks to uphold democracy, the protection of human rights, and the rule of law across 46 States. Further, President O’Leary addresses what challenges the Court’s judicial work poses for national systems and why, despite some legitimate criticism of the Convention system, we in Europe should not lose sight, at this critical point in history, of what that system was established to do: namely, to monitor compliance with the minimum standards necessary for a democratic society operating within the rule of law. About the Speaker: Síofra O’Leary has been a Justice of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), elected in respect of Ireland, since 2015. Having served as a Section President and Vice-President since 2020, she was elected President of the Court in 2022. Prior to the ECtHR, President O’Leary worked for many years at the Court of Justice of the European Union. She is a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges and was previously Assistant Director of the Centre of European Law at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Emmanuel College.

'War in Europe: how threatened are Russia’s neighbours?' With full-scale war in Europe now into its third year, the continent’s security environment has been transformed since February 24, 2022. This is most obviously the case for the primary victim of Russia’s aggression – Ukraine – but also for many of its near neighbours. In this edition of IIEA Insights, how the Russian threat is perceived is assessed by a Ukrainian living in Ireland since just after the invasion, an Irishman based in Helsinki and a Polish security expert in Warsaw. Eoin McNamara is a research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs specialising in transatlantic relations; NATO; and security in northern and eastern Europe. He has published in the NATO Review, the Revue Militaire Suisse, the Defence Forces Review and has commented on security, defence and international affairs in outlets such as BBC World, Euronews, the Times of London, the New York Times, El Pais and the Irish Times. Robert Pszczel is a senior fellow at the security and defence department of the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw. A former diplomat with many years of service in the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, both in Warsaw and in Brussels, he was a member of the national team for accession talks with NATO in 1997. From 1999 (until his retirement in 2020) he served on NATO’s International Staff in Brussels and as the director of the NATO Information Office in Moscow. Olena Tregub heads the secretariat of The Independent Defence Anti-Corruption Committee. The Committee, which is a joint initiative of Transparency International Defence and Security and Transparency International Ukraine, aims to reduce corruption and increase accountability in the Ukrainian defence sector. She has previously worked for Ukraine's Ministry of Economic Development, at UN Headquarters in New York and as a lecturer in international relations.

The European Union is often depicted as a cradle of judicial activism and a polity built by courts. In a keynote address based on his award-winning book, The Ghostwriters, Dr Tommaso Pavone shows how this judge-centric narrative conceals a crucial arena for political action. He argues that, beneath the radar, European integration unfolded as a struggle between judges who resisted European law and lawyers who pushed them to embrace change. About the Speaker: Dr Tommaso Pavone is Assistant Professor of European Politics at the University of Toronto and Visiting Researcher at the ARENA Centre for European Studies at the University of Oslo. His research traces how interactions between lawyers, courts, and policymakers impact political development, social change, and the rule of law in Europe. He received his PhD in 2019 from Princeton University.