Other News

Under Shahnaz Akhter’s expert organisation, the Department is running a Widening Participation project this year called the Colonial Hangover, in which students will be encouraged to challenge what they think they already know about the continuing legacies of the British Empire. Other project members are former PAIS undergraduate student Nikita Shah, who is now enrolled on the MA in Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo, current PAIS undergraduate student Honey Fafowora, and Matthew Watson.

Various events are being run on campus and in participating schools this year, culminating in a full Pathways to Politics Colonial Hangover Day on July 13^th. The Pathways to Politics Day will have a distinct arts theme to it, as it will include a commissioned dance by the Sapnay School of Dance and an exhibition of commissioned artwork by Inkquisitive Illustration, alongside a showcase of the work that the participating students will have undertaken on the project, Honey’s own accompanying art exhibition and Nikita’s spoken word workshop. The project partners also include the British Film Institute, the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry and the University of the Arts in London.

The video is a recording of the lecture that was delivered by Matthew Watson at Warwick on March 22^nd to introduce the project. Along with other learning materials, it will shortly be showcased by IGGY, Warwick’s online platform for outreach to teenage students around the world. IGGY has very kindly provided the Colonial Hangover project with its own pages on its website.

PAIS PhD student Jennifer Philippa Eggert is to give a talk on women in ISIS in Leamington on Saturday April 16th for the UNA Warwick & District.

Since the emergence of so-called 'Islamic State' (ISIS) in the Spring and Summer of 2014, the cases of young Muslims from Europe joining ISIS in Syria have garnered considerable media attention. Especially the fact that dozens of young women have decided to migrate to the Middle East and join ISIS has raised many questions.

In her address to the local UN Association, Jennifer Eggert will share findings from her research focusing on women and terrorism in general, and women in ISIS in particular. She will address issues such as:

• What are the reasons for which young British women decide to leave their homes and join a terrorist group in a war zone?
• What do we know about their motivations and expectations?
• Once with ISIS, what are their roles within the organisation?
• Why have ISIS decided to encourage women to join them from abroad?
• What can we do to counter and prevent this trend?

In her research, she focuses on political violence and terrorism, with a particular focus on the role of women during war and violent conflict. She holds degrees from LSE, Sciences Po and the European University Viadrina and has worked in the fields of intercultural dialogue, community empowerment, capacity building and the prevention of extremism in a number of countries in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia.

More details on the event can be found here.

Dr. Charlotte Heath-Kelly has written an article, titled Counterterrorism in the NHS: The ‘Prevent’ Strategy takes to the Clinic, for E-International Relations.

The article can be read at http://www.e-ir.info/2016/04/13/counterterrorism-in-the-nhs-the-prevent-strategy-takes-to-the-clinic/

Leicester City's win at Sunderland over the weekend guaranteed the club Champions League football next season.

As the club close in on the most unlikely of Premier League titles, ITV Central News caught up with Dr David Webber, module director of the PAIS final year undergraduate module, The Cultural Political Economy of Sport, to ask what he thought the economic and cultural impact of the Europe's premier club competition might be for the city of Leicester.

The report can be watched below:

Following a rigorous selection process, the Department of Politics and International Studies and Q-Step Centre at the University of Warwick are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Andreas Murr to the Assistant Professorship in Quantitative Political Science.

Currently, Dr Murr is Lecturer in Quantitative Methods in Political Science at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, Associate Member at Nuffield College, Non-Stipendiary Lecturer at Lincoln College, and member of the Oxford Q-Step Centre. He is also member of the editorial board of Electoral Studies, co-editor of The Plot, and co-convenor of the Political Methodology Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association. In 2013 he received his PhD from the University of Essex. His research focuses on election forecasting, the voting behaviour of immigrants, and the selection of party leaders. He combines the study of these topics with an interest in political methodology, in particular Bayesian methods. His work has been published in Electoral Studies, the International Journal of Forecasting, Political Analysis, and Research & Politics.

We look forward to welcoming Dr Murr as of 1 September 2016.