Masterclass series
Tackling Urgent Global Challenges: A Sussex Masterclass Series
FREE ONLINE MASTERCLASSES 2025: OPEN TO ALL
Use the dropdowns below to find details about each class and information on how to register.
- Climate Finance, Climate Justice, and the Fallout from COP 29 - Wed 5th Feb 13.00 - 14.00
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With Dr Olivia Taylor
Climate finance is central to international responses to climate change, in order to fund both mitigation (reducing greenhouse gas emissions) and adaptation (managing climate impacts). Despite its significance, the outcome of COP 29 in November 2024—where developed countries pledged $300 billion, falling far short of the $1.3 trillion requested by developing nations—underscored the persistent gap between ambition and the willingness of developed countries to commit the financial resources required to meet this.
This masterclass will delve into the issue of climate finance, introduce the international climate finance landscape as part of the wider development financing infrastructure and contextualise the outcomes from the most recent COP as part of longer and ongoing struggles for adequate climate finance, finance for loss and damage and climate justice. - Perspectives on Irregular Migration and Human Trafficking - Wed 12th Feb 13.00 - 14.00
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With Professor Priya Deshingkar
In this masterclass we will interrogate three dominant policy and aid narratives on irregular migration, human trafficking and the impacts of such migration on development to examine how they analyse the causes and effects and possible "solutions" to such migration. We will draw on rich ethnographic research that goes beyond economic analysis and presents migrants' own perspectives on their experiences, long term goals and what migration means to them. In doing so we will challenge Western ideologies that are now shaping government and NGO interventions in the Global South and look at alternative approaches to migration management.
- Explaining and Overcoming the Global Food Crisis - Wed 19th Feb 13.00 - 14.00
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With Dr Ben Selwyn
One of the great paradox's of our time is hunger within the context of food abundance. In this masterclass we'll be explaining this paradox and discussing ways to address it. Does free trade contribute to or detract from food security in poorer countries? Why, in rich countries such as Britain, do large numbers of the population suffer from food insecurity? How does the global food system contribute to rising rates of obesity across the world? What kinds of food systems can provide sufficient volumes of healthy food, produced in ways which mitigate environmental destruction, for the world’s growing population?
- The End of the Liberal International Order and the Return of Great Power Politics - Wed 26th Feb 13.00 - 14.00
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With Professor Fabio Petito
In this Masterclass, I will investigates the new geopolitics of an emerging multipolar world order, the return to Great Power politics and thecurrent discussion over the end of the US-led postWWII Liberal Internationla Order. This new global predicament is closely connected to the “rise of the new Great Powers”, in particular China, and the re-emergence of Russia as an actor challenging a Western-dominated liberal order. It coincides with the fallout of the global economic crisis, perceptions of American decline or at least disengagement, the emerging shift of economic power away from the West as well as the implications of the recent conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. The class aims to provide students with an overview of this changing nature of contemporary geopolitics and the foreign policy strategies of the established and emerging great powers.
- Gender and Violence: Connections and Intersections - Wed 5th March 13.00 - 14.00
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With Dr Lyndsay McLean
In this masterclass, we will consider the ways in which violence and gender inter-relate. To what extent is violence used to maintain gender inequalities? To what extent is violence gendered in its causes, dynamics and consequences? How are different forms of structural, political and interpersonal violence connected? How do violences based on gender and other social categories such as race and sexuality intersect? We will look at the common drivers of violence, how violence begets violence and how violence is shaped by social and structural context.
- Four Myths About Global Poverty - Wed 12th March 13.00 - 14.00
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With Dr Rebecca Prentice
Developing solutions to global poverty requires that we understand its real causes. This masterclass confronts the awkward truth that despite best intentions, the institutions, structure and practices of ‘development’ can contribute to growing inequality, poverty, and marginalisation of communities in the global South. Understating how and why this is the case helps us devise inclusive and empowering anti-poverty approaches. This session challengea conventional wisdoms by deconstructing four common ‘myths’ about global poverty. Drawing together interdisciplinary International Development and the deeply situated analysis provided by Social Anthropology, this masterclass demonstrates Sussex’s critical-practical approach to teaching and research.
- The Politics and Governance of Rebel Groups - Wed 19th March 13.00 - 14.00
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With Dr David Brenner
Rebel groups are mostly viewed through the lens of violence and disorder. But these movements entail more than gun-wielding guerrillas. Their clandestine operations unfold their own organizational politics. Many rebels also govern significant territory with state-like administrations, entertaining multifaceted relations with civilians. This seminar introduces different approaches for understanding such rebel politics and the social orders they produce. Doing so poses fundamental questions about power and sovereignty in international politics.
- Mining, Political Ecology and Sustainability - Wed 26th March 13.00 - 14.00
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With Dr Andrea Brock
The mining of fossil fuels, metals, and minerals – whether for coal, green energy projects, or gold – has disastrous impacts on communities and ecosystems across the world. Mining is also resisted by communities and grassroots groups, forcing mining companies to invest in ever new ways to gain legitimacy and gain a ‘license to operate’. In this masterclass, we explore how they do this. We analyse the political ecology of mining and sustainability, at the intersection between state power, corporate violence, and community resistance, and have a closer look at how power shapes ecologies and ecosystems.
- Decolonising Development - Wed 2nd April 13.00 - 14.00
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With Dr Suda Perera
In this masterclass, we will consider what does it mean to Decolonise Development – by unpacking knowledge, power and identity and how we can unlearn the ways of thinking that result in the inadvertent reproduction of colonial oppression. This masterclass will show how decolonising is not just a set of discrete actions (such as adding more voices from the Global South to reading lists, or DEI boards), but is rather an on-going process of changing structures and mindsets. With a specific focus on what it means to learn decolonially at Global Studies, the masterclass will talk through three elements of the process: decolonising the University, diversifying ways of learning, and demythologising academic orthodoxies.
- Sociability and World Politics: Practices, Rituals, and Emotions - Wed 9th April 13.00 - 14.00
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With Dr Felix Roesch
In this masterclass, we remind ourselves that not all international encounters are constant struggles for domination. This is ever more important in a world in which populists, demagogues, and autocrats seem to take over. This doesn’t mean we have to dance on the ceiling, but we need to understand how sociability, in other words all these events in which people come together to raise the roof, have some fun, and enjoy the company of others, contributes to world politics. We will dissect what happens during these events, study some of its practices and rituals, before we investigate how emotions circulate during such events. This will help us in a next step to investigate what we can do to instigate them to contribute to a more peaceful world.