Hi everyone and welcome to the next Brexit and Beyond podcast from the UK and a changing Europe.

Really excited today that my guest is Professor Nairi Woods, who is the founding dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.

And, I should confess, an old friend, I think we were students together back in the black and white days, if I remember rightly, Nairi.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And for those not familiar with Blavatnik, can you just explain to us what it is and what it does? Thank you so much for joining us. And for those not familiar with Blavatnik, can you just explain to us what it is and what it does?

Sure. So we're a school of government, and what that means is we're actually a place with a mission, which is to support and improve government.

And the way we as a school that teaches, that does research, that engages with policymakers,

I think what the sort of singular thing that we're really trying to do is help governments

learn from each other faster.

So almost every student that walks into the school and every year there's,

you know, somewhere between 120 and 150, who come in from about 80 different countries around the world.

You know, typically they're about 30. They've already been contributing hugely to the public

interest in their countries. And they walk in and they think, well, all other countries could learn from each other,

but my country is special.

The specific conditions of my country mean that the only homegrown solutions will work.

And it's true and untrue.

And what we're trying to do in the Blavatnik school is really do research, teach,

bring people together in ways that helps them learn, help them learn much more quickly from what

other countries are doing. And you can see that in the COVID crisis that we're living through

at the moment, that the need for countries to stop being snobby about which other countries

they'll learn from for Britain to understand, that being a magnet for that kind of talent is really

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