Other News

Nicola Pratt, Reader of the International Politics of the Middle East, will join Shami Chakrabarti (director of Liberty), Sophie Walker (leader of the Women's Equality Speaker), Nawal Elsaadawi (Egyptian feminist) and others speaking at the Feminism in London 2015 Conference. The conference is the largest annual feminist conference in the UK and will take place 24 and 25 October in London.

See http://www.feminisminlondon.co.uk for more details on how to attend.

Dr David Webber recently talked to Sky News about the future of Fifa and Sepp Blatter.

Nick Vaughan-Williams, Professor of International Security and Head of the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, has been awarded a prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize worth £100,000.00 by The Leverhulme Trust.

Philip Leverhulme Prizes recognise the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is judged to be exceptionally promising. Each year the scheme awards up to thirty Prizes across a range of disciplines and in 2015 the selected subject areas are: Classics, Earth Sciences, Physics, Politics and International Relations, Psychology, and Visual and Performing Arts.

The Prize is in recognition of Nick’s research at the intersection of international security and border studies. Drawing together his long-standing interest in the international politics of border security with more recent work on vernacular theories of security threats, he will use the Prize to launch a new three-year project (2016-19) entitled ‘Everyday narratives of European border security and insecurity’.

The project will investigate how European citizens narrate their own experiences and understandings of border security and insecurity against the backdrop of the on-going Mediterranean migration and refugee crisis. In-depth critical focus group research across major cities affected by the crisis – with groups varied according to age, ethnicity, socio-economic background, religion, and gender – will generate rich qualitative insights into how diverse publics make sense of the crisis, the kinds of stories they tell about how it affects their own lives and others’ including migrants and refugees, and the impact of EU border security and migration management policies and practices on ‘regular’ populations.

Aside from several scholarly outputs including a research monograph, the Prize will generate an open access data archive of vernacular theories of everyday border security and insecurity, and research findings will be disseminated via a bespoke project website, targeted media interventions, and engagement with end-users (citizens, migrant and refugee activist groups, governments, the EU Commission, and media) throughout the lifecycle of the research.

Further information about the Philip Leverhulme Prize can be found here: https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/funding/grant-schemes/philip-leverhulme-prizes

In an article for POLITICO Europe PAIS PhD researcher Ragnar Weilandt comments on the Nobel Peace Prize for the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet. Her argues that while the Tunisian transition looks successful in comparison, massive challenges remain and things can still go terribly wrong

IPE researchers from PAIS have won the IATL Strategic Project Grant for I-PEEL: International Political Economy of Everyday Life.

This innovative teaching project aims to create an online teaching tool for use in political economy modules. Its content will be steered by students and geared to their development as self-directed learners. The central format will revolve around a set of front page 'tiles' (i.e. clickable squares) presented on a webpage, which will feature an image or object such as a cup of coffee, a bar of soap, or a development charity poster. Our pedagogical purpose is to provide students with an accessible route into the study of the global economy; a topic which is complex and can often feel like it is far removed from the realities of people’s daily existence. The project will achieve this by producing a platform website which will host a series of short academic reflections on the political economy of the objects and events of everyday life. Taking advantage of the online format, the text will also be supplemented with pictures and podcasts, hyperlinked sources, feeds on further reading, and linked forums for online discussion.

The project is funded by the University of Warwick Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning. Project team members are: James Brassett, Juanita Elias, Lena Rethel and Ben Richardson (all PAIS). The online platform will be developed in collaboration with IGGY.

We are currently in the process of recruiting volunteers for our student advisory board. Please email Lena at L.Rethel@warwick.ac.uk if you want to get involved.

We also gratefully acknowledge the support from colleagues in CAL, CIM, English and Comparative Literary Studies, Film and Television Studies, History, Law, Sociology, Theatre Studies and WBS.