Other News

The Great Transformation, by Karl Polanyi, celebrates its 70th anniversary this year. The economic historian’s great work holds a compelling and alternative understanding of the economic and financial crises affecting the economy today. Matthew Watson, Christopher Holmes and Ben Clift explain why The Great Transformation is a great alternative to the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx or Friedrich Hayek.

You can read this feature on the Knowledge Centre website.

Dr. Charlotte Heath-Kelly, Program Director for the MA in International Relations here in PAIS, is an editor on the new book Counter-Radicalisation.

This book offers a wide-ranging and critical examination of recent counter-radicalisation policies, using case studies from several countries.

Counter-radicalisation policies, such as the UK ‘Prevent’ strategy, have been highly controversial and increasingly criticised since their introduction. In this edited volume, voices from disciplines including sociology, political science, criminology and International Relations are brought together to address issues across the global roll-out of counter-radicalisation agendas. In so doing, the book critically interrogates: (i) the connections between counter-radicalisation and other governmental programmes and priorities relating to integration and community cohesion; (ii) the questionable dependence of counter-radicalisation initiatives on discourses and assumptions about race, risk and vulnerability to extremism; and, (iii) the limitations of existing counter-radicalisation machineries for addressing relatively new types of extremism including amongst ‘right-wing’ activists.

Through examining these questions, the book draws on a range of contemporary case studies spanning from counter-radicalisation in the UK, Germany and Denmark, through to detailed analyses of specific preventative initiatives in Australia and the United States. Conceptually, the chapters engage with a range of critical approaches, including discourse theory, autoethnography and governmentality.

This book will be of much interest to students of radicalisation, critical terrorism studies, counter-terrorism, sociology, security studies and IR in general.

Counter-Radicalisation is available now through Routledge.

Professor Franklyn Lisk, Professorial Research Fellow for CSGR, and Hany Besada, a PhD candidate here in PAIS, have co-edited the new book Moving Health Sovereignty in Africa. The book is also co-edited by John J. Kirton, University of Toronto, Canada and Andrew F. Cooper, University of Waterloo, Canada.

Today’s era of intense globalization has unleashed dynamic movements of people, pathogens, and pests that overwhelm the static territorial jurisdictions on which the governance provided by sovereign states and their formal intergovernmental institutions is based. This book insightfully explores the challenges this creates in ways that put the perspectives of Africans themselves at centre stage.

‘A timely and much needed analysis of a continent undergoing rapid transition resulting in complex health consequences. Africa’s experiences of globalization are poorly understood so far, yet need to be urgently grappled with for effective governance to be built locally and regionally. This book takes us neatly forward in this task.’

Kelley Lee, Simon Fraser University, Canada and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK

The book is available from the Ashgate Publishing website.

Dr Trevor McCrisken, Associate Professor in PAIS, gave a talk at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo in Canada on Friday, September 19. In the talk, entitled Weapon of Choice: Barack Obama and the Seductive Nature of Drone Warfare, Trevor argued that the allegedly "cost-free" nature of using drones for the targeted killing of alleged terrorists makes them an extremely attractive weapon for the Obama administration, garners widespread public support in the US, and makes it more likely that the war against terrorism will be a perpetual war. Trevor was in Waterloo as part of a PAIS delegation finalising arrangements for a new Double Masters in Politics and Global Governance with the Balsillie School. The new programme will launch in 2015 and enable students to study for a year in Warwick and a year in Waterloo.

PAIS has made significant gains moving up to 7th in the rankings in Politics in the Times’ and Sunday Times’ Good University Guide 2015 league table.

The University of Warwick was named as the University of the Year 2015 and achieved an overall ranking of 8th in the UK.

The full results for Politics can be found here.

Much of our rise is due to improved NSS scores this year. The more we maintain and boost already strong scores in research, entry standards and graduate prospects, amongst others, the more we can further climb the league table