Cameron Hunter and Maria Mälksoo participated in the 66th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association (ISA) in Chicago, US on 2-5 March 2025. Dr Hunter chaired the panel ‘Making Deterrence Possible: Rituals and Narratives in the Study of Deterrence’ and presented his work on interaction ritual chains in US-China nuclear politics therein. He further served as a chair and discussant of the panel on ‘Automated World-Making: Ethics, Culture, and Artificial Intelligence’, and presented a paper on ‘Cynicism and Nationalism in Contemporary Chinese Nuclear Pop Culture’.

Prof. Mälksoo convened a panel ‘Ritual Realms and Repertoires in World Politics’ which brought together a number of contributions for the forthcoming special issue of the project. She presented a paper ‘Deterrence at Arm’s Length: NATO and the Russian War on Ukraine’, and contributed to three roundtables: on ‘The Mnemonic Turn in IR’; ‘Honouring Stefano Guzzini as Global International Relations Section (GIRS) Distinguished Scholar’, and ‘Critical Perspectives on NATO’.