1. This recent report from the UCL Policy Lab, The World in 2040: Renewing the UK’s approach to International Affairs, did not pull its punches: “The physical surroundings [of the Foreign Office headquarters] also hint at the Foreign Office’s identity: somewhat elitist and rooted in the past. Modernising premises – perhaps with fewer colonial-era pictures on the walls – might help create a more open working culture and send a clear signal about Britain’s future.” PDF to download here https://tinyurl.com/m8hawmjd and downloaded for your convenience below!

Here’s what The Guardian had to say about the report: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/08/foreign-office-elitist-rooted-in-the-past-new-report

2. Daniel Kahneman, best known for ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’, died recently. Here’s a recent McKinsey interview with him and Olivier Sibony, Sounding the alarm on system noise, which explains how ‘noise’—or unwanted variability—clouds organizations’ judgments, and what can be done about it https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/sounding-the-alarm-on-system-noise You can read or watch the interview, and there’s a PDF below. There’s also PDFs below of two other classic Kahneman pieces from the McKinsey Quarterly, Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut? and Beware the ‘inside view’

And here’s his New York Times obituary https://tinyurl.com/37b5t9e4

3. News of two grant schemes from TIRF, The International Research Foundation for English Language Education: TIRF Doctoral Dissertation Grants (for current doctoral candidates advanced to candidacy in language education-related fields) and TIRF Kathleen M. Bailey Teacher-Research Awards (for practising teachers worldwide of English as a second/foreign/additional language). Lots more info on the Dissertation Grants, worth up to US $5,000, closing date 15/05/2024, here https://www.tirfonline.org/doctoral-dissertation-grants/ and lots more info on the Bailey Awards, worth up to US $1,000, closing date 20/06/2024, here https://www.tirfonline.org/bailey-award/ PDFs of the call for proposals for both below.

4. Cambridge University Press have just published Loic Menzies’ Mapping the Way to Educational Equity. Loic defines educational equity in a very interesting way: “an equitable education system (is) one in which educational support is distributed in a way that individuals would agree to if they wanted education to provide them with the freedom to write their own life story, but did not know which family they would be born into, or how easy they would find learning.” There’s a great quote early on: “It is true to say that without data, you are just another person with an opinion, but without the expertise to make sense of the available information, you’re just another person with data.” PDFs of whole report and summary only below; download here https://tinyurl.com/4rsp6kux

5. And, finally, for anyone that’s ever seen ‘Fitzcarraldo’ by Werner Herzog (but not just for them), At the Teatro Amazonas by Harriet Rix on the LRB blog https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/april/at-the-teatro-amazonas