Year 12 IB Global Politics Paper 2 is notoriously challenging, but two of my students cracked the top band in 2024 in response to the following questions. (I wasn't tackling questions like this until my Master's in International Security Studies.)

‘Cheering out of happiness’: The year 12s who received perfect IB scores Some 827 NSW International Baccalaureate students received their results on Tuesday morning, ahead of HSC results being released on Wednesday.

I could not be more proud of our students and teachers at SSC. My first cohort of graduating IB Global Politics students have achieved phenomenal results! www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...

Booktopia is now taking preorders for 'Literature & Pedagogy' from Sydney University Press for the discounted price of AUD 43.25 (RRP $60). Read my chapter on literature & liberation & more Gardinerian delights! www.booktopia.com.au/literature-p...

Syria Shudders as Assad’s Prison Atrocities Come Into the Light At the country’s most notorious prison, Syrians confront their worst fears: that they will never know what happened to the loved ones who disappeared.

Reading of the liberation of
Sednaya it is impossible not to think of the many thousands who yet languish in the North Korean gulag.

"Syria Shudders as Assad’s Prison Atrocities Come Into the Light" www.nytimes.com/2024/12/14/w...

After reading 'Small Things Like These' I turned to Claire Keegan's other fiction this weekend, reading 'So Late in the Day' & 'Foster'. Such precise Chekhovian prose to convey such magnitudes. Keegan's world is one where things mean things & need no overexplanation. A tonic for our prolix age.

I highly recommend Professor Lisa Wedeen's analysis of the Assad cult of personality in Syria in 'Ambiguities of Domination'. A book I found useful during my study of the strength and fragility of charismatic politics in North Korea.

Literature & Pedagogy Building upon the approach to reading literature pioneered by Dr Bruce Gardiner at the University of Sydney for over four decades, Literature and Pedagogy is devoted to the way that texts, literary te...

Brief plug for my next publication. I have a chapter in this forthcoming tome. If much of my scholarship in North Korean Studies was about the role of literature in authoritarian pedagogy, this is a survey of literature and pedagogy as liberation. sydneyuniversitypress.com/collections/...

Tentatively returning to the social media fold after a pleasant hiatus. Looking forward to catching up with old friends to discuss my favourite things (literature, cinema, Korea, et al).