We are delighted to announce that Peter Vale is to begin blogging on e-IR. Vale is the Nelson Mandela Chair of Politics at Rhodes University, South Africa, and has held visiting appointments as a Fellow at the International Centre for Advanced Studies, New York University, Professor at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, and at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and a Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. His blog is titled “International Relations: thoughts from the global periphery”. You can read it at: www.e-ir.info/petervale