Other News

A new blog post by Professor Nick Vaughan-Williams, entitled 'Europe's border crisis as an autoimmune disorder', has been published by the European Green Journal.

"A crisis point has emerged, whereby the figure of the ‘irregular’ migrant is seen as both a security threat to the European Union (EU) and its borders and as a life that is itself threatened and in need of saving by the EU and its agencies. This contradiction leads to paradoxical situations in the field of EU border politics whereby humanitarian policies and practices frequently expose ‘irregular’ migrants to dehumanising and sometimes lethal security mechanisms."

The full article can be accessed here: http://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/author/nick-vaughan-williams/

PAIS PhD student Lucy Hatton was invited by the President of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), Georges Dassis, to speak at the 2016 ECI Day conference. This annual conference brings together European politicians, campaigners, civil society representatives, academics and stakeholders at the EESC in Brussels to discuss their experiences of the European Citizens' Initiative, a tool of participatory democracy in the EU and the focus of Lucy's doctoral research.

Dr Vincenzo Bove has recently given a seminar for the International Monetary Fund Research Department External Seminar Series.

In his seminar, titled ‘On the Heterogeneous Consequences of Civil War’, Dr Bove shows how the occurrence of a civil war has heterogeneous effects on the level of GDP, using case-study, synthetic control and large-N panel-data approaches. He first discusses the relation between these methods and then provide lower and upper estimates of the economic effect of civil war. Although, on average, the incidence of internal conflicts has a negative effect on the GDP level, it is very often insignificant. More importantly, however, both methods display a wide variety of individual separate effects, and in a large number of countries civil war has either no effect or a positive and significant impact on the prospect for economic growth.

PAIS PhD student Marco Andreu was invited to present at the LSE Conference on 'Everyday Humanitarianism'.

Marco's paper was entitled: 'A Responsibility to Profit? Social Impact Bonds as a Form of Humanitarian Finance'.

Abstract:

Recent years have seen the emergence of new forms of ‘social impact investing’ which aim to achieve the dual objective of producing a social outcome while earning financial returns on capital. One subset of impact investing vehicles is the so-called social impact bond (SIB), geared towards financing social welfare services. Across the Global North and the Global South, SIBs are now being rolled out to facilitate humanitarian purposes through market means. In an effort to trace the politics of such “humanitarian finance”, Marco engages a case study of the London Homelessness SIB, which seeks to improve outcomes for entrenched rough sleepers.

Further details of this ongoing project on ethical finance and the politics of impact investing can be found here: https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/andreu/

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.