The Second Warwick/RIPE Debate in IPE - Tuesday 5th May 2009‏

The Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick hosts an annual public debate in IPE organised in conjunction with the Review of International Political Economy. Last year's debate was conducted in front of an audience of 100 drawn from 20 different institutions, and the content of the debate - complete with full audio recording - can be found by accessing the following link: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/ipe/ripedebates/. This message is advanced warning of the date and the contents of the 2009 Warwick/RIPE Debate in IPE. It will take place on Tuesday 5th May and it will revolve around the recent contribution to the study of IPE made by Professor Mark Blyth of Johns Hopkins University in the United States, who will be talking about and promoting his new book, Handbook of International Political Economy (Routledge, 2009). The event will take the form of a roundtable discussion of the intellectual rationale underpinning the organisation of the Handbook, and in addition to Professor Blyth it will also involve Professor Barry Gills (University of Newcastle, and a former Editor of RIPE), Dr Jeffrey Chwieroth (London School of Economics) and Professor Shirin Rai (University of Warwick).There is no entrance charge for attending the debate, so this message constitutes an open invitation for all to attend. The debate will take place between 4.00 p.m. and 6.00 p.m. on the afternoon of 5th May, and further details along with travel information will shortly be circulated about the precise room booking. The Department of Politics and International Studies looks forward to welcoming as many people as possible to the event.Yours truly,Matthew WatsonDepartment of Politics and International StudiesUniversity of WarwickCoventry, CV4 7AL

Touching War publicity for April

TOUCHING WAR: APRIL Touching War, which I have been directing at Lancaster University this academic year with the Politics/IR department, under IAS and LU Film Society sponsorship, formally concludes this month with the theme BODIES OF WAR. http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/events/touchingwar/. Professor Christine Sylvester, Politics/IR (c.sylvester@lancaster.ac.uk) WORKSHOP: WHERE ARE THE BODIES OF WAR? Friday, April 3, 9:45-5:30, IAS room 2/3. Wine Reception follows. Sponsored by IAS. Open to all. TALKS BY BRIGITTE HOLZNER, Director of Gender and Development at the Austrian Development Agency. Author of numerous articles on overseas development, most recently of "Legal Pluralism in the Family Law: Implications for Development Policy," in Family, Law, Religion. Debates and Cases in the Muslim Worlds (2009), "Agrarian Restructuring and Gender - Designing Family Farms in Central and Eastern Europe," Gender, Place and Culture (2008), "The Theatre of War," Forced Migration Review (2007), "Gender Habitus und Entwicklungszusammenarbeit: Stärken und Grenzen Bourdieu'scher Konzepte," in Politik - Programme - Projekte. Menschenorientierte Entwicklungszusammenarbeit im Sinne von Bourdieu (2007), and "Youth, Sexuality and Sex Education Messages in Indonesia: Issues of Desire and Control," Reproductive Health Matters (2004). ATHINA KARATZOGIANNI(Media, Culture and Society, Hull) Author of The Politics of Cyberconflict (2006), co-author of Power, Conflict and Resistance: Social Movements, Networks and Hierarchies (2009), and editor of Cyber Conflict and Global Politics (2009). She has also written on cross-disciplinarity, the open source movement, and war coverage in global hotspots. ADI KUNTSMAN (Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures, Manchester) A Leverhulme Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures, Kuntsman is co-editor of Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality (2008), and author of Figurations of Violence and Belonging: Queerness, Migranthood and Nationalism in Cyberspace and Beyond (forthcoming). PAT NOXOLO (Geography, Loughborough) A lecturer in Human Geography, Noxolo has written "Negotiating Security: Governmentality and Asylum/Immigration NGOs in the UK," in Spaces of Security and Insecurity: New Geographies of the War on Terror, eds. K. Dodds and A. Ingram (forthcoming) and "Freedom, Fear and NGOs: Balancing Discourses of Violence and Humanity in Securitising Times," in Development and Colonialism: the Past in the Present, ed. M. Duffield and V. Hewitt (forthcoming) CAMI ROWE (Politics/IR Lancaster). An IR PhD student with a performance background, Rowe has presented papers at several International Studies Association (ISA) conferences in the USA, most recently on "Violent Women for Peace" and "That Whole Gender Paradigm: Antiwar Veterans Redefining Security." She also helped script and perform the Collaging IR2 innovative panel at the ISA (2009) organized by Professor Christine Sylvester. WORKSHOP SCHEDULE 9:45 Coffee 10:00-10:10 Introduction by Professor Christine Sylvester, Director of Touching War 10:15-11:00 Keynote Address: Dr. Brigitte Holzner (Gender and Development at the Austrian Development Agency), "Peace and Security Through Gender Policy? Development policy and practice are increasingly challenged by the consequences of war and armed conflict that not only destroy livelihoods but also are more and more fought on women's bodies. I shall present policy responses to the human rights violations of women in war and armed conflict as stipulated by resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and taken up in National Action Plans. The discussion will concentrate on notions of gender, gendered security, and gender justice in those policies, and weave in issues of war crimes at Srebrenica and the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Liberia. 11:00-11:30 Discussion led by Christine Sylvester 11:30-12:00 Pat Noxolo (Geography, Loughborough) "Securitisation, Migration and NGOS Since 9/11," Examines short-term and potential long-term changes in the spatial practices and spatial imaginary of UK-based NGOs concerned with asylum/immigration, in response to an asylum/security nexus arising around the terrorist attacks on September 11th (9/11) and July 7th (7/7). 12:00-12:30 Discussion led by Brigitte Holzner 12:30-1:45 Lunch 1:45-2:15 Adi Kuntsman (Cosmopolitan Cultures, Manchester) "The Cybertouch of War: Visuality, Circulation and Affect" Based on studying the Russian-speaking Internet as post-Soviet 'diaspora space,' Kuntsman explores the growing Islamophobia, Orientalism and racial hatred in Russian-language websites, blogs and discussion forums against the backdrop of a globalised 'war on terror,' post 9-11 US politics, and the Russian-Chechenian and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. Notes complex connections between nationalism and migration, violence and reconciliation, and the bloody materiality of wars and their reverberations in cyberspace 2:15-2:45 Discussion led by Pat Noxolo 2:45 Break for Coffee 3:00-3:30 Athina Karatzogianni (Media, Culture and Society, Hull), "The Body and Technology in the War Machine" Addresses several body-erasing aspects of contemporary warfare. Included are facets of the revolution in military affairs that emphasize unmanned vehicles and especially ICTs, as well as soldiers-mercenaries, private companies and contracts personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan who staff private detention centres and are implicated in prison torture. Also considers the body in resistance to such body-erasing strategies. 3:30-4:00 Discussion led by Swati Parashar 4:00-4:30 Cami Rowe (Politics/IR, Lancaster), "Re-embodying Unknown Soldiers" Highlights performative antiwar protest actions by American veterans of the "War on Terror" and demonstrates the ways that veterans are rescuing notions of soldierliness from pro-war rhetoric through dramatic references to embodied violence and victimhood. 4:30-5:00 Discussion led by Christine Sylvester 5:00-5:30 Ways forward led by Brigitte Holzner and Christine Sylvester 5:30 Wine Reception

CfP - Millennium Annual Conference: After Liberalism?‏

Millennium Annual Conference: After Liberalism? Call for papers The annual conference of Millennium Journal of International Studieswill take place on the 17-18 October 2009 at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The conferencewill focus on the role of liberalism today and in the future. The discipline of IR has long had a strange courtship with liberalism.Indeed, it could be argued that liberalism has come in and out ofintellectual fashion, largely as a response to world events. After twoworld wars and the Great Depression, the self-proclaimed foundingfathers of IR sought to distance themselves from the unfulfilledpromises of Wilsonian liberalism by taking a hard and 'scientific' lookat power politics. A few decades later, policymakers, practitioners andacademics heralded the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of bipolarityas beckoning in a new cooperative world order. Now, 20 years since the'End of History', the liberal moment seems increasingly under threat.International and domestic norms and institutions are confronted withthe War on Terror. Those who presented the International Economic Orderas the road to global prosperity face one of the worst financialmeltdowns in living memory. Cosmopolitan-inspired interventionism isjuxtaposed with the failure to prevent and react to humanitarian crises,and democratic projects around the world have either stagnated orreversed. Finally, the (re-) emergence of distinctly illiberal greatpowers further questions the universality of liberalism in the post-ColdWar world. The Millennium 2009 Conference, marking the 20th anniversary since theend of the Cold War, presents a unique opportunity to put recentdevelopments in international relations into theoretical perspective. Ifthe first twenty years crisis sounded the 'death toll' of liberalism, doevents today once again mean a victory for realism? Is the liberalmoment announced in 1989 now over? To what extent can IR 'learn fromhistory', or like Wilsonian liberalism after WWI, will the end of thisliberal order bring very different outcomes and results? Finally, in light of recent scholarship integrating political philosophyand IR, what value does liberalism as an ideology, celebrating the normative primacy of the individual, have inguiding us through current international problems? This conference seeks to address the role and critiques of liberalism inIR theory and practice today. It active ly encourages debate between IR's different intellectual traditions, andlooks forward to discussion on all aspects of the merits or problems of liberalism in IR. Keynote Speaker: Professor G John Ikenberry (Princeton) Opening Address: Professor Mick Cox (LSE) Suggested Panel Topics: * Capital or Kapital? The 2008 Financial Crisis and the NeoliberalConsensus * The First Debate Revisited: The 'End of History' or 'Back to theFuture'? * The Rise and Fall (and Rise?) of Offensive Liberalism * Time to Learn Russian and Mandarin? The Rise of Illiberal Powers * When the Emperor had No Clothes: Re-evaluating Explanation,Forecasting and Prediction in IR Theory since 1989 * Kant's Long (but Fading?) Shadow: Re-evaluating Liberal Theories ofInternational Relations * Conflict Resolution as State-Building: InstitutionalisingNeoliberalism in Post-Conflict Societies * Emancipation and Ideology in the 21st Century: Will the 'Last Man'Please Stand Up? * Political Philosophy meets IR Theory: Liberalism versus Republicanism A selection of the conference papers will be published in Millennium:Journal of International Studies, vol. 38, no. 3. Please submit your abstracts by 30 April 2009 to millennium@lse.ac.uk Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electroniccommunications disclaimer:http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm

CfP 'The Future of Interdisciplinarity in International Relations' 15 September 2009

THE FUTURE OF INTERDISCIPLINARITY IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSA conference organized by the Midlands Regional IR NetworkHosted by the Department of Political Science and International StudiesUniversity of Birmingham, Tuesday 15th September 2009.CALL FOR PAPERS:The study of International Relations (IR) has often borrowed from, and built upon, the work produced in diverse academic disciplines. These range from philosophy to economics, sociology to criminology, geography to cultural studies, and from international law to the philosophy of science. Despite the significant debt that the development of IR as a field of study in its own right owes to interdisciplinary scholarship, debates over the future development of interdisciplinarity in IR are too often treated as a marginal concern. In addition, while many IR scholars borrow from the research insights of other disciplines, disciplinary boundaries such as the organizational structures of universities and the specialization of academic journals and publishers often inhibit rather than facilitate dialogue between scholars and students working in similar research areas.This one-day conference aims to bring together scholars working on contemporary issues in International Relations from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds to discuss the future of interdisciplinarity in the study of International Relations.The organizers invite potential participants to submit one of the following two types of proposals:1. Individual conference paper proposals that directly address issues related to interdisciplinary scholarship in IR. The organizers are especially interested in papers that draw on the wide pool of relevant scholarship from outside the traditional 'IR canon', but which also seek to address the challenges involved with producing interdisciplinary scholarship that attempts to engage with an often sceptical 'mainstream' IR audience.2. Research project proposals that will contribute to - and draw on - interdisciplinary scholarship in IR. This may include PhD research proposals, post-doctoral research proposals, or academic research grant proposals, and may be completed project designs that have already been submitted or works-in-progress. Successful proposals will be presented in a similar manner to conference papers, but with the specific aim of strengthening scholarly dialogue and knowledge exchange over interdisciplinary project design, access to funding for interdisciplinary research projects, and how to publish interdisciplinary research outputs.ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:The deadline for paper proposals and research project proposals is 1 June 2009. Successful conference applicants will be notified by e-mail by 30 June 2009. Further additional information, including the conference programme, will be published on the conference website in July 2009.CONFERENCE ORGANISERS:Dr. Andr=E9 Broome (University of Birmingham)a.broome@bham.ac.uk <mailto:a.broome@bham.ac.uk> Dr. Nicola Smith (University of Birmingham)n.j.smith.1@bham.ac.uk <mailto:n.j.smith.1@bham.ac.uk>Dr Annika Bergman-Rosamond (University of Leicester)abr3@leicester.ac.uk <mailto:abr3@leicester.ac.uk>

Touching War at Lancaster University‏

TOUCHING WAR: MARCH EVENTS The Touching War activities I am directing at Lancaster University withthe Politics/IR department, under IAS and LU Film Society sponsorship,continue. March's theme is Women: Armed and Dangerous? Join a newgeneration of feminists in international relations to reconsider issuesof war and masculinity and the war question for feminists. Events areopen to all. For the schedule through April 2009, see the Touching War website:http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/events/touchingwar/ Professor Christine Sylvester, Politics/IR I. ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION AND DEBATE: RECONSIDERING WAR AND MASCULINITY Thursday 19 March, 4:00-6:00, IAS room 2/3. Wine reception following.Sponsored by IAS War has long been viewed by feminists as the ultimate masculine arena ofinternational relations, one that involves women and children mostly asvictims of violence, sometimes as combatants, rarely as perpetrators.This roundtable introduces the theme of Women: Armed and Dangerous? byfeaturing a mostly new generation of leading international relationsanalysts interested in probing, challenging, enlarging, and reframingthe war and masculinity equation in ways that bring in "women's" agencyand politics. Participants: Megan MacKenzie (Women in Public Policy, Harvard). Has interviewed womensoldiers in Sierra Leone about their war and post-war experiences.Author of "Securitization and De-securitization: Female Soldiers and theConstruction of the Family," Security Studies (2009), "De-SecuritizingSex: War Rape and the 'Radicalization' of Development in Sierra Leone,"Feminist Journal of International Politics (forthcoming), and co-authorof "Silent Identities: Children Born of War in Sierra Leone" in CharliCarpenter ed. Born of War: Protecting Children Born to Sexual ViolenceSurvivors in Conflict Zones. (2007). Cristina Masters (Politics, Manchester). Interested in feminism,masculinity and practices of (in)security in international politics,with special attention to the US military and the role of technology inwar and security practices. Author of several articles related to thismonth's theme, including Femina Sacra and the War on Terror," SecurityDialogue, 2009), and "Bodies of Technology II: Cyborg Soldiers andMilitarised Masculinities," in Rethinking The 'Man Question' inInternational Relations: Sex, Gender, and Violence in InternationalRelations, eds. Jane Parpart and Marysia Zalewski (2008). Elina Penttinen (Tampere Peace Research Institute). Interested inexperiences of war, security, and insecurity as dailiness in women'slives, and feminist theory about the body and subjectivity. Author ofGlobalization, Prostitution, and Sex-Trafficking: Corporeal Politics(2007), "Providing Security: White Western Feminists Protecting "Other"Women," in Mark Haugaard and Howard Lentner, eds, Hegemony and Power:Consensus and Coercion in Contemporary Politics (2006), and "WhoseVoices Matter: Feminists Stretch the Boundaries of the InternationalRelations Discipline," in Subhash Durlabhji, ed., Power in focus:Perspectives from Multiple Disciplines (2004). Laura Sjoberg (Political Science, Virginia Tech). With both a PhD and aJD, she is interested in gender justice in wars, violent women, andgender and international security. Authored Gender, Justice, and theWars in Iraq (2006) and co-authored Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women'sViolence in Global Politics (2007). General editor of the Gender andPolitical Violence book series from New York University Press, andauthor of "The Gendered Realities of the Immunity Principle: Why GenderAnalysis Needs Feminism," International Studies Quarterly (2006) and"Gendered Torture? Feminist Insights into Abu Ghraib and Gender in the21st Century," International Feminist Journal of Politics (2007). Professor Christine Sylvester (Politics/IR), Seen as raising the warquestion for feminism and pursuing it in "The Art of War/the WarQuestion in Feminist IR, Millennium: Journal of International Studies(2005). Author of two theory books in the Cambridge series onInternational Relations, two books on the political economy of Zimbabwe,and lately Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It(2009). Author of War, Feminism, and International Relations and editorof Major Works in Feminist International Relations (four volumes), bothforthcoming with Routledge. II. WORKSHOP: THE WAR QUESTION FOR FEMINISM Friday, March 20, 9:30-5:30, IAS room 2/3. Sponsored by IAS Many feminists have been disinclined to study the social institution ofwar, because to study war has seemed to mean accepting it or evenendorsing it over feminist goals of peace and war protest. The neglectof war studies even in feminist international relations is changingrapidly with the advent of a new generation of feminists researching warwithout necessarily supporting it. This workshop showcases theirthinking about the war question for feminism and enables us to seerealms of politics, agency, emotion and physical violence that have beenwhispered about in the past, or sensationalized in the media, more oftenthan researched. 9:30-10:00 Christine Sylvester, "Introducing The War Question forFeminism: What Are The Issues?" 10:00-10:30 Elina Penttinen, "The Possibilities of Finding Joy ThroughFeminist Research on War" What happens to us as feminist IR writers and researchers when we chooseto focus on life, joy and empowerment in places usually seen throughfeminist lenses as victimizing for women, such as war? I will talk aboutwhat I call hopeless feminist problem-making in regard to the warquestion and look for solutions. 10:30 Break for coffee 10:45-11:15 Discussion led by Megan MacKenzie 11:15- 11:45 Laura Sjoberg "Women's Sex Crimes in War" Addresses questions of women's participation in sexual violence inwartime, particularly their participation in and instigation ofgenocidal rape. It looks at theoretical and legal implications ofwomen's sexual violence as well as media and scholarly reactions tothose acts. 11:45-12:15 Cristina Masters "Does Homo Sacer have a Sex? Women, theFeminine and War" An attempt to provoke critical feminist inquiry into the figure of homosacer in Giorgio Agamben's philosophy, and reveal how the category mayserve to obscure the modalities through which practices of war renderwomen as bare life in particular ways. 12:15-1:00 Discussion led by Christine Sylvester 1:00-2:15 Lunch 2:15-2:45 Corinna Peniston-Bird (History, Lancaster), Co-author ofContesting Home Defence: Men, Women and the Home Guard in the SecondWorld War (2007), and co-editor of A Soldier and a Woman; SexualIntegration in the Military (2000). '"I'll be Part and Parcel of the Great British Army": Women'sConstructions of Service in the 'Good' War."Takes as its starting place women's retrospective personal testimony onserving in the British Armed Forces in the Second World War, aperiodisation which permits examples to be drawn from the experiences offemale conscripts and volunteers, but as construed from a contemporaryperspective. 2:45-3:15 Megan MacKenzie, "Women: Armed and Dangerous in Sierra Leone" Insights and stories of over fifty female soldiers in Sierra Leone arethe foundations of this presentation, which challenges fundamentalassumptions about what women "do" during and after conflict. 3:15-3:45 Swati Parashar (Politics/IR Lancaster), Author of "FeministInternational Relations and Women Militants: Case Studies from Sri Lankaand Kashmir," Cambridge Review of International Affairs (2009) andco-author with Christine Sylvester of "The Contemporary 'Mahabharata'and the Many 'Draupadis': Bringing Gender to Critical Terrorism Studies,in Critical Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda (2009), eds.Richard Jackson, Marie Breen Smyth, and Jeroen Gunning. She editedMaritime Counter Terrorism: A Pan Asian Perspective(2007) and co-editedTerrorism in South East Asia-Implications for South Asia (2006). "Militant Women in South Asia: Case Studies from Sri Lanka and Kashmir"Women as perpetrators, planners and patrons of violent militantactivities in the conflicts in Sri Lanka and Kashmir. 3:45-4:00 Break 4:15-4:30 Discussion led by Laura Sjoberg 4:30-5:30 Theorizing the War Question for Feminism -Sylvester, Sjoberg,MacKenzie, Penttinen, Masters For information on these and future Touching War events, contactProfessor Christine Sylvester: c.sylvester@lancaster.ac.uk

PhD Studentships - Loughborough University‏

Loughborough University Department of Politics, International Relations & European Studies PhD StudentshipsThe Department of Politics, International Relations & European Studies (soon to become the Department of Politics, History & International Relations) has at least two fully-funded postgraduate research studentships available, to begin in October 2009.The Studentships provide a maintenance award of £13,290 p.a. for three years, and cover fees at the UK/EU level. The deadline for the receipt of applications is 30 April 2009.Please note: - The Studentships are only for full-time study.- They are only open to UK/EU applicants.Applications are invited in any area which lies within the Department's areas of expertise, including: EU studies (particularly external relations); British foreign policy; foreign policy analysis and diplomacy; intelligence studies; international security studies; international politics of the Asia-Pacific region; anarchist studies (history, politics or theory); international relations theory; contemporary political theory; international historyFurther information can be obtained from Dr David Berry, Coordinator, Postgraduate Research (d.g.berry@lboro.ac.uk) who is happy to discuss draft proposals before a formal application is made. Further details about the University can be found here: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/prospectus/pg/index.htm and guidance on research proposals can be found here: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/eu/studying/research/admissions-procedure.html ____________Brian HockingProfessor of International RelationsDepartment of Politics, International Relations and European StudiesLoughborough UniversityLeicestershire LE11 3TUUK

postgrad editors wanted - Knowledge Politics Quarterly‏

Dear Colleagues,
The online journal Knowledge Politics Quarterly would like to inviteapplications from postgraduate students to join our editorial team. The topics covered by KPQ include the media, the internet, broadcasting,technological development, the social, political and economic implications ofICTs – in terms of theory, policy or practice. Please visit http://www.knowledgepolitics.org.uk/journal.html to read ourlatestedition. We feel that this would be a great opportunity for postgraduates to gainexperience of editing, and insight into the nature of academic publishing. If you are interested in joining our team please contact Craig Berry atC.Berry@sheffield.ac.uk. Please feel free to forward this to any colleagues who may be interested We look forward to hearing from you Craig Berry-- Department of PoliticsUniversity of Sheffield E: c.berry@sheffield.ac.ukT: 0114 272 1041M: 07972 892 955 www.knowledgepolitics.org.uk