A public lecture, entitled ‘Reconciling work and poverty reduction: How successful are European welfare states?’ will be held at the University’s Gateway Building, Hall E, Msida, on Wednesday at 6pm by the Department of Social Policy and Social Work of the Faculty for Social Wellbeing.

The speaker is Bea Cantillon, professor of social policy and the director of the Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy at the University of Antwerp, Belgium.

The lecture focuses on links between poverty trends, patterns of labour market participation and social distribution.

The impact of employment-centred welfare reforms on the alleviation of poverty is critically analysed within a broader perspective of evolutions in contemporary welfare states.

Cantillon has published widely and internationally on a range of issues relating to poverty, social policy, social security, the welfare state, and gender.

The Islamic State’s rise in Iraq

A lecture entitled ‘The rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the ‘misery’ of democratisation’ will be held at the University’s P.P. Saydon Arts Lecture Theatre (ALT), Msida, on Thursday from 11am to 1pm by the Department of International Relations.

The speaker is Baghdad-born Arsalan Alshinawi, a full-time academic at the department since 2009, after over 13 years at Malta’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including postings at Maltese diplomatic missions in North Africa.

He is a research associate with the Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies in Beirut and a member of the foreign editorial board of the Annual of Asian and African Studies Journal of St Petersburg State University.

The lecture is free of charge and open to the public.

For further information call 2340 3083 or e-mail annelise.calleja@um.edu.mt.