Tuesday, March 24, 2026, 6.00pm to 8.00pm EDT
Join Cambridge in North America as we host a conversation with the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Geopolitics, featuring Director, Brendan Simms, and Japan and Korea Programme Director, John Nilson-Wright.
The discussion will explore a rapidly shifting global landscape, from rising geopolitical tensions across Europe, Asia, and the Americas to the growing challenge posed by Russia and the PRC, and the United States that appears increasingly detached from the postwar rules-based international order. Drawing perspectives from London, Brussels, Tokyo, and Seoul, the speakers will examine how these theatres are interconnected and consider new possibilities for collaboration among smaller Great Powers and Middle Powers which Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke about at Davos.
We look forward to seeing you.
Speakers
Brendan Simms is the founder and Director of the Centre for Geopolitics. He works on European geopolitics, past and present, and his principal interests are the German Question, Britain and Europe, Hitler’s global anti-semitism, Humanitarian Intervention and state construction.
He teaches at both undergraduate and graduate level in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS); he also supervises history undergraduates at Peterhouse, Cambridge. His MPhil courses on the History of European Geopolitics use scenarios as part of the teaching and learning process. He has supervised PhD dissertations on subjects as diverse as Intervention and State Sovereignty in the Holy Roman Empire, Sinn Fein, the American colonists and the eighteenth-century European state system, the Office of the UN High Representative in Bosnia, and German Civil-Military relations. Professor Simms is a frequent contributor to print and broadsheet media.
He has advised governments and parliaments, and spoken at Westminster, in the European Parliament (Brussels) and at think-tanks in the United Kingdom, the United States and in many Eurozone countries. The Centre for Geopolitics is designed to draw together all these interests. Learn more.
John Nilsson-Wright (formerly Swenson-Wright) is the Fuji Bank Professor of Japanese Politics and the International Relations of East Asia at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (FAMES) at the University of Cambridge and an Official Fellow at Darwin College. He is a graduate of Christ Church and St. Antony’s Colleges, Oxford, and SAIS Johns Hopkins University. He was Head of the Chatham House Asia Programme from March 2014 to October 2016 and has also been the Senior Research Fellow for Northeast Asia and Korea Foundation Fellow with Chatham House’s Asia-Pacific Programme. He is also a non-resident fellow at the Sejong Institute in Seoul, ROK; Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Korea Centre, East Asia Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS); and a non-resident fellow at the Centre for North Korean Studies at the University of Vienna. His research focuses on Cold War history including US-Japan alliance ties, and the contemporary international relations and politics of Northeast Asia, with reference to Japan and the Koreas. In his policy work, he focuses on regional security and the changing nature of alliance relations in East Asia. He is currently writing a monograph on populism and identity politics as a contemporary and historical phenomenon in both Europe and Northeast Asia. Learn more.
Dr. Sanjay Ruparelia is a Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University, and holds the Jarislowsky Democracy Chair, made possible by a generous donation from the Jarislowsky Foundation.
In addition to a PhD in Politics from the University of Cambridge, Dr. Ruparelia holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours-Political Science) from McGill University and a Master of Philosophy (Sociology and Politics of Development) from the University of Cambridge.
Prior to joining the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Met, Dr. Ruparelia was Associate Professor of Politics at the New School for Social Research. Prior to the New School, he was assistant director of the South Asia Institute, a lecturer at Columbia University, and served as a consultant to the United Nations. Read more.
Booking information
This event has sold out.
Please contact events@cantab.org to add yourself to the waitlist.
