Date: Thursday 24th August
Time: 12:30 - 14:00
Venue: FAB2.48, Faculty of Arts Building

Professor Hatakeyama is in the UK to connect with UK-based academics and experts to gain insights about the UK's Indo-Pacific policy in the context of 'China's rise', i.e., its assertive irredentist claims in the Indo-Pacific region supported by increased military spending and activity. This is in relation to her current research project that examines the Indo-Pacific policies of the UK, Australia and Japan. Fortunately, she has agreed to give a talk for the EASG on her research in this area which will act as a launching-off point for a broader discussion about the UK's Indo-Pacific policy and the security situation in the region more generally. The paper she is presenting is entitled 'Japan's and Australia's approaches to China: The nature of threat perception and proximity'.

Kyoko Hatakeyama earned her PhD in Politics at Macquarie University in 2008. She has worked at several prestigious universities in Japan and has been a professor at the Department and Graduate School of International Studies and Regional Development at the University of Niigata Prefecture since 2020. She has been a Visiting Research Fellow at Leiden University and is a Japan Fellow at the Asia Society Australia. Her research covers Japan's security policy, peacekeeping, security in Asia and the Indo-Pacific region. Her previous book, Japan's Evolving Security Policy: Militarisation with a Pacifist Tradition, examined Japan's post-Cold War security policy shift.

Tom Long joined Mark Leon Goldberg on the podcast Global Dispatches to discuss small states in world politics. Goldberg is an experienced foreign affairs journalist and the editor of the UN Dispatch. They discussed Tom's recent book, A Small State's Guide to Influence in World Politics, and the lessons for small states facing growing competition among great powers. As Goldberg summarized, "If you overlook small states, you are missing a complete picture of world politics today."

You can listen to the podcast on their website: https://www.globaldispatchespodcast.com/how-small-states-can-influence-world-politics/

ONLINE EVENT – 8th February 2023, 17:00-18:30

Presented by BREM – Borders, Race, Ethnicity and Migration Network

Join the meeting using this link on the day of the discussion: https://bit.ly/3WzTbFR

Thom Tyerman will discuss his book Everyday Border Struggles: Segregation and Solidarity in the UK and Calais with Ana Aliverti (University of Warwick) and Joe Turner (University of York)

In an age of mobility, borders appear to be everywhere. Encountered more and more in our everyday lives, borders locally enact global divisions and inequalities of power, wealth, and identity. From the Calais ‘jungle’ to the UK’s ‘hostile environment’ policy, this book examines how borders in the UK and Calais operate through everyday practices of segregation. At the same time, it reveals how border segregation is challenged and resisted by everyday practices of ‘migrant solidarity’ among people on the move and no borders activists. In doing so, it explores how everyday borders are key sites of struggles over and against postcolonial and racialised global inequalities. This talk will be of interest to scholars and students working on migration, borders, and citizenship as well as practitioners and organisers in migrant rights, asylum advocacy, and anti-detention or deportation campaigns.

The Data and Displacement project (PI: Vicki Squire) launched its final project report at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on 12 September. The findings reveal that, as new ways to collect data continue to grow, humanitarian actors need to improve ethical and operational data practices for internally displaced persons (IDPs).

The AHRC and FCDO-funded team of researchers for the Data and Displacement project come from the Universities of Warwick, Ibadan, Juba and Glasgow, and from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Over two years, the team of experts conducted 174 in-depth interviews with a range of stakeholders, including international data experts, donors, and humanitarian practitioners, as well as regional humanitarian actors and IDPs living in camps in north-eastern Nigeria and South Sudan.

You can read the report here.

PAIS are delighted to announce that Victor Agboga, has been awarded a prestigious Routledge/Round Table Commonwealth Studentship award for the academic year 2022-23. (The Round Table being the leading Commonwealth journal, founded in 1910, and Routledge being the journal's publishers.) Only two of these awards are made each year.

Victor has worked as a student missionary, a news writer in several media outlets in Nigeria, and a teaching assistant in PAIS. He also owns a YouTube channel with over forty thousand subscribers as of September 2022, where he shares international scholarship tips and opportunities.

Victor’s research revolves around African politics, African political economy, human security, and international development. He has won several international awards including the Standard Bank Africa Chairman Scholarship, the Helmut Schmidt Masters Scholarships for Public Policy and Good Governance, the Mo Ibrahim Governance for Development in Africa Initiative Scholarship, the British Institute in Eastern Africa Grant, and the Working Group in African Political Economy Grant. His research interrogates, both quantitatively and qualitatively, how voters respond when their elected politicians change political parties – whether they punish or reward them, in a non-Western context. He particularly examines this phenomenon in Africa, using Nigeria, the biggest democracy on the continent, as a case study. His research sits against the backdrop of ongoing debates on voters’ agency and party institutionalisation in Africa.

With the Routledge/Round Table Commonwealth Studentship award, he aims to produce an academic paper for the Round Table, plan conference presentations within and outside Africa, film a podcast on his key findings on voters’ response to party switching in Africa, and disseminate them both in academic and policy spaces.

You can find more information on the Routledge/Round Table Commonwealth Studentship Awards on their website.