Other News
Deadline Extended-- Warwick Graduate Conference in Security Studies
‘Security and the Everyday’
31 October - 1 November 2013
Keynote: Professor Jutta Weldes (University of Bristol); Professor François Debrix (Virginia Tech)
More and more research in critical security studies pays attention to the realm of everyday experience, popular culture and fictional narratives, and how they produce and reproduce discourses of security and representations of identity. At the same time, distinctions between politics and entertainment seem increasingly tenuous in a world of globalized spaces of hyper-reality. From the real-time images of remote controlled drone strikes to the imagined realities of video game franchises, and from the realpolitik of TV shows and comic books to the narratives of IR textbooks, virtual and actual realities blend into each other. This conference explores the interconnections and implications of this inter-textuality of security and image, narrative and identity, and power and fiction.
If you are interested in participating please send details of your affiliation, an indicative title, and an abstract of no more than 250 words to Georg Löfflmann (g.lofflmann@warwick.ac.uk).
Deadline for abstracts: 9 September 2013
PhD candidate quoted in Ryukyu Shimpo article
Miriam Grinberg, a PhD candidate under the supervision of Professor Chris Hughes and Dr Nick Vaughan-Williams, was recently quoted in an 11 August article appearing in the print edition of the Ryukyu Shimpo, a local newspaper in Okinawa prefecture, Japan. She was interviewed by a reporter about the plans for relocating US Marines Air Base Futenma from Ginowan City to Henoko Village in Nago City, Okinawa.
Read the article (JPEG in Japanese)
Prof Chris Hughes featured in Mainichi Shimbun article
Professor Chris Hughes, Head of Department, was recently featured in a 2 August Mainichi Shimbun article discussing expectations for Japan's global role under the Shinzo Abe administration after the victory of his party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), in July's Upper House elections.
The Mainichi is one of the most widely-read newspapers in Japan with a daily circulation of 4 million readers.
Read the article (PDF in Japanese)
Prof Matthew Watson receives ESRC Professorial Fellowship
The ESRC has recently announced that it has appointed Matthew Watson of PAIS to one of its Professorial Fellowships from September 2013. These prestigious three-year positions are made available on a biennial basis, and Professor Watson's is the first award of this nature ever to come to the department. The scheme is designed to identify potential ESRC 'champions', people whose work showcases UK social science as a whole to the wider world. PAIS Head of Department, Professor Christopher Hughes, says: "We are delighted to have the opportunity to house an award of such stature, and it is an indication of Matthew's standing within the profession that he was chosen to hold it in the face of such fierce competition".
Professor Watson's fellowship programme of work focuses on how it might be possible to rethink the concept of 'the market'. There is a purely intellectual element to his project, as it asks about the important shifts in the history of economic thought that have allowed the market to be conceived as a mechanism of efficient allocation, as well as how these shifts have been embedded in orthodox economics pedagogy. As befits the demands of the scheme, though, the project also has a practical element. The abstract questions on which the research design is based also have a real-world counterpart in asking why the response to the global financial crisis has been an increasingly unquestioning attachment to austerity. Professor Watson will be working alongside groups seeking to promote new ways of thinking about the market to challenge such an attachment, as well as with community education providers seeking to empower people to think critically about the obstacles currently being placed in the way of their life chances.
Prof Chris Hughes quoted in The Christian Science Monitor
Prof Chris Hughes, Head of Department, was quoted in an article appearing on 19 July in The Christian Science Monitor entitled 'Hot summer for Japan and China disputes'. Below is an excerpt from the piece:
"Japan is keen not to militarize the dispute and is using the very substantial Japan Coast Guard as its first line of defense to ward off the Chinese presence," says Mr. Hughes. “His visit to Ishigaki … was a demonstration of Japan's resolve on the territorial issue."