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School of Politics and International Relations

RGIPS Newsletter, April 2023

Published:

Dear students, colleagues, and friends,

Welcome to the second iteration of the DoingIPS newsletter, bringing you the latest news, events and research relating to the DoingIPS research-node in SPIR. Enjoy the short read and don’t forget to visit our website and follow us on twitter @doingips.

Upcoming events

Doing IPS Symposium – Transveralising the social and political: writing time; making space

April 14, 2023. 12:00-18:00 Queen Mary (GC201) and online

This symposium explores practices of both space and time making and how they transversalise the political, social, and international. Building on current developments in IPS, it seeks to:

  1. set up a debate on how modes of space making, and the spatial concepts and methods that are being used to analyse them, fracture positionality and identities in contemporary international politics;
  2. explore if giving primacy to temporalities leads to distinctive transversalising approaches in international politics and IPS.

After an introduction and key-note address, two dedicated experts’ roundtables will tackle both issues. The symposium also includes a closed session aimed at setting up a transatlantic writing support network between PhD students and early career researchers from Belgium, Brazil, the Netherlands, and the UK. This event is funded by a British Academy Writing Workshop Grant (WW20200143), the LISS-DTP, and the School of Politics and International Relations at QMUL.

Click here for the event’s full program and registration link.

PhD Workshop with Prof Stefano Guzzini

April 18, 2023. 10:00-17:00 Queen Mary (GC222)

Prof. Stefano Guzzini (Uppsala, PUC-Rio, DIIS) will hold a full-day workshop for the benefit of our SPIR PhD students. Throughout the day, Stefano will be discussing the work of eight PhD researchers, giving them comments on how to carry their projects forward or work up paper for submission at peer-reviewed academic journals. This is a unique opportunity for PhD candidates in International Relations to gain in-depth feedback from a leading thinker in their field.

Prof. Guzzini research lies within International Relations, relying on social and political theory, political science, sociology, and political economy. The workshop is organised by Dr Alvina Hoffmann for the DoingIPS research node at SPIR.

More information is available here

Roundtable – Revisiting Critical Security Studies: the conditions and challenges of being critical of security today.

April 18, 2023. 17:15-18:45 Queen Mary (GC101) and online

While today is not a particularly special moment to revisit the meaning, conditions and challenges of critically engaging with security, it is not an insignificant time to do so either. We have come out of a global pandemic to land in a war in Ukraine with global ramifications. Racialising practices and identity concerns continue to put security studies and democratic politics in turmoil. Outspoken intensifications of geopolitical readings of security combined with expectations of a looming planetary catastrophe sustain imaginations of living in end-times while raising issues on how to engage the international and planetary simultaneously in critical security studies. This roundtable seeks to contribute to ongoing reflections on what it might mean to be critical of security today. It invites debate on key theoretical challenges for Critical Security Studies that emerge in light of both contemporary security practices and recent developments in security studies. Chaired by Dr Alvina Hoffman, the roundtable will feature contributions by Prof Rita Abrahmsen (University of Ottawa), Prof Claudia Aradau (KCL), Prof Jef Huysmans (QMUL) and Prof Michael Williams (University of Ottawa).

Click here to register and for more information.

The politics of austerity and what we learned from it – a seminar with Dr Janne Autto

April 19, 2023. 15:00-16.30. Queen Mary (GC102) and online

After the financial crisis in 2007–2008 most of the countries were running significant budget deficits. States developed much criticised austerity policies in order to create economic growth and to stop the growth of public debt. This presentation reflects on what austerity is, focusing on the case of Finland in 2010s and what it meant from the perspectives of economy, democracy, social justice and ecological carrying capacity. In addition, it considers what lessons from it should be remembered now that state debts have increased and signs of financial turbulence are strongly present again. The presentation is based on a recently published edited book, which examines last decade of austerity from multiple perspectives.

Janne Autto is an Associate Professor in sociology at the University of Lapland (Finland). His work focuses on political struggles over welfare state and citizens’ social rights and responsibilities as well as on governmental aspirations and resistance to them. Janne will be visiting SPIR in April.

More information and signing-up link are available here

Ongoing events

DoingIPS PhD Seminar Series London

The fifth edition of the DoingIPS London PhD Seminar Series is still ongoing, with upcoming seminars planned for 28 April, 26 May, and 30 June. Jointly organised by PhD researchers and the DoingIPS convenors, the seminar series brings together UK-based PhD students from a variety of institutions and disciplinary traditions to present their work, invite external discussants, and gather focussed feedback. Participants meet once a month in one of the three host institutions – KCL, LSE and QMUL – for a total of ten, 2-hours-long seminars throughout the academic year. This year’s series will also host a special session on ‘The Everyday Politics of Bureaucrats’ to take place in May. More information on this special session will be available soon.

Save the date

IPS Winter School 8th Edition – 3-14 July 2023

The IPS Winter School is an annual event held over two weeks for the benefit of postgraduate students and researchers. Its objective is to debate critical themes and approaches proposed by international political sociology. The 8th Edition of the IPS Winter School will take place between the 3rd and 14th of July 2023 at PUC-Rio’s campus in Rio de Janeiro. More information available here.

Latest research from our PhD Researchers and ECRs

Shruti Balaji (LSE), ‘From Colonial Subjecthood to Shared Humanity: Social Work and the Politics of “Doing” in Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay's International Thought’ published in Global Studies Quarterly.

Italo Brandimarte (University of Cambridge), ‘Breathless war: martial bodies, aerial experiences and the atmospheres of empire’ published in the European Journal of International Relations. This piece was also awarded the ISA Best Graduate Paper Award by the IPS Section.

Anna Finiguerra (QMUL), ‘Re-imagining Mobility: From (In)visibility to Multiple Processes of Making Present’ published in Millennium: Journal of International Studies.

Alvina Hoffman (QMUL), ‘What makes a spokesperson? Delegation and symbolic power in Crimea’ published in the European Journal of International Relations.

Caio A. Martins Simoneti (University of Cambridge), ‘More Human than Human’: Colonial Logics and the Modern Subject in Science Fiction Films’ published in Millennium: Journal of International Studies.

About the DoingIPS Research Node at SPIR

DoingIPS is a transnational research network bringing together scholars working in the broad area of International Political Sociology (IPS). IPS scholarship engages contemporary challenges to instituted relations between the social, political and international. It is methodologically varied and theoretically transdisciplinary. The School of Politics and IR at Queen Mary is home to one of the DoingIPS research nodes which has been organising seminars series, workshops, roundtables, and other public events.

We hope you enjoyed our newsletter and wish you a happy end of term.

Jef Huysmans, Hannah Owens and Mirko Palestrino

 

 

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