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My name is Holly Rodgers. I am currently a First Year PhD Student in the PAIS department at the University of Warwick. Between 10th and 20th September 2022 I visited the University of Montreal in Canada for a graduate exchange as part of the Jean Monnet Network “Between the EU and Russia” (BEAR) to work with Prof. Magdalena Dembinska. This visit built on my recently submitted MA thesis “The Puzzling Foreign Policy Behaviour of Poland towards Belarus” and was facilitated by my MA dissertation supervisor at PAIS, Prof. Maria Koinova, as an excellent fit with the thematic discussions within the BEAR network of which Warwick is part. In turn, my visit to Canada was aimed to enhance the development of my Ph.D thesis, focusing on memory, identity and nostalgic discourse in post-Soviet EU member states.

Located at the EU Jean Monnet Centre in Montreal, I had the opportunity to meet and network with other Ph.D. students also researching the EU, and other doctoral candidates at their Graduate Center, whose topics were thematically close to mine. I met also academic faculty whose willingness was incredible to discuss my research plan, theoretical focus, and operationalisation of difficult concepts such as identity. Their feedback during individual conversations was superb. In that short time span, I was given my own office to work in, and an opportunity to present my research plans to a larger academic audience. The seminar set was a perfect opportunity for me to practice presentation skills in a friendly environment and to get useful feedback on aspects of my early research – conceptual and methodological – that need finetuning. This was an excellent experience for me to justify my Ph.D. project in the ways it has been designed, and to build my skills for the forthcoming First Year Review at PAIS, and ultimately for the viva.

This visit to the University of Montreal will be invaluable for my further Ph.D. studies. Not only did it offer a new perspective, but the feedback and expertise academics shared with me have given me plenty of food for thought about my research plans. I feel that my Ph.D. project has evolved because of this visit. Short but clearly fruitful 10 days in Montreal, full of 1:1 meetings, a seminar, and informal conversations with colleagues seem like a condensed indicator of what is to come on my PhD journey – and for that I am incredibly grateful.

In a blog for 'Big Data for Migration', Vicki Squire discusses how research from the Data and Displacement project points to a disconnect between international humanitarian standards and practices on the ground, highlights the need to revisit existing ethical guidelines such informed consent, and signals the importance of investing in data literacies.

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 PhD candidate Mauricio Palma-Gutiérrez and PAIS's Tom Long have co-authored a new article. The piece has been published by Revista Desafíos as part of a forthcoming special issue on new trends in the study of Colombian foreign policy. The Spanish-language article, "Política exterior colombiana y performatividad: ¿Un 'buen miembro' del Orden Internacional Liberal?" examines how Colombia's performances striving to be seen as a "good member" of liberal international order help co-constitute and legitimate that order. Palma-Gutiérrez and Long illustrate these performances in two cases: the treatment of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia and the participation of Colombia in the prohibitionist "war on drugs."

The article can be read here.

Tom Long's article, co-authored with Carsten-Andreas Schulz of Cambridge University, has been published by International Organization, among the most prestigious outlets in International Relations. "Compensatory Layering and the Birth of the Multipurpose Multilateral IGO in the Americas" emerges from Long and Schulz's AHRC-funded research on Latin America and the formation of international order. In the piece, Long and Schulz illustrate the innovations that led to the creation of the world's first multipurpose, multilateral international organization--a form associated with the League of Nations and the United Nations. The first such body was the Pan American Union, which developed between 1890 and 1910 through a series of bargains between the United States and Latin American states. The article builds a bridge between Global International Relations and the study of institutional design, while also advancing institutionalist understanding of the design and development of IOs.

You can read Tom's article here.