The University of Warwick's Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) has given a cross-faculty grant to professor Jacqueline Hodgson in the School of law and faculty members from WBS, Politics & International Studies, and Sociology to carry out An exploration of the war on terror: representations, risk, legal and government strategies, with the aim of developing cross-faculty collaboration and attracting international speakers.

Project Description

It is now commonplace to claim that the attacks of 9/11 as well as the events that have flowed from them – war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ‘war on terror’, the adoption of a policy of preventive war - have reshaped world politics. Governments have struggled to find the answers/policies/institutions to understand and mitigate the multiple threats posed by terrorism. This proposal seeks to bring together existing expertise within and beyond Warwick in a seminar series structured to enable a cross-disciplinary dialogue around these dilemmas that can enhance both particular disciplinary research agendas, develop synergies between relevant disciplines (for academic staff and postgraduate students) and create policy outreach that can together provide the basis for future grant applications.

The core focus of the series will be the choices that governments have made about the relation between traditional assumptions about civil liberties and the allegedly new character of the threat, and therefore of the security measures necessary to meet that threat.

This project will focus on four strands within this nexus:

• The ways in which the boundaries of criminal responsibility have been extended through new offences and exceptional procedures, including a comparative approach to how countries such as Germany, the US, France and the UK have dealt with the criminal/terrorist nexus now and in the past.
• How terror and anti-terror discourses are established and reinforced through the use of existing and emergent narratives, ‘templates’ and ‘memories’, that frame media, public, and political interpretations in the post 9/11 context.
• The debate surrounding risks, hazards and security. Private sector organisations, e.g. telecommunications, finance, pharmaceutical, transport and leisure industries that form a significant part of the critical national infrastructure. How can they become more resilient in the face of such ongoing threats?
• The differing representations of Islam made by terrorists, governments and the media through exploring the intersecting and conflicting discourses that have multiplied via the complex connectivites of the ‘new media ecology’, looking at the possibilities for alternative representations.

Activities:

The series is designed as a forum for the exchange and debate of diverse perspectives and methodologies relevant to research on counter-terrorism, with each participating department taking the lead in at least one seminar – to include Warwick and outside speakers. The series will be complemented by additional sessions to develop the interdisciplinary links made through the seminars and to establish a firm collaborative basis for the various planned outputs.

Research Group:

• Professor Jacqueline Hodgson, Director, Legal Research Institute, School of Law
• Professor Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, Political and International Studies (PAIS)
• Dr Bridgette Sullivan-Taylor, Warwick Business School (WBS)
• Dr Andrew Hoskins, Department of Sociology