Other News
ESRC funded research on border security presented at Frontex conference
Dr Nick Vaughan-Williams (PAIS) and Dr Daniel Stevens (Exeter) were invited by the European Commission and Frontex to present the findings of their research at the 2nd Global Conference and Exhibition on Automated Border Control (ABC), Pepsi Arena, Warsaw, 10-11 October, 2013. The event attracted over 200 participants including government authorities, policy makers, international organizations, standardization bodies, airport authorities, academia, and private companies offering technologies and products related to ABC.
A summary of their research on ‘Border Security: Public Perceptions and Experiences’ can be found here: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/vaughan-williams/frontex_poster.pdf
Prof Stuart Croft appointed Provost
Professor Stuart Croft from PAIS has just been appointed as Warwick's new Provost by the University Council. A professor of international security since 2007 and previously the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research (Arts and Sciences), Prof Croft succeeds Prof Koen Lamberts, who was recently appointed Vice Chancellor of York University.
As Provost, Professor Croft will lead on the academic development of the University, including academic resourcing strategy and implementation, the primary relationship with Chairs of Faculty in developing academic management and the line management of heads of academic departments.
New book published by Dr Madeleine Fagan
Ethics and Politics after Poststructuralism: Levinas, Derrida, Nancy (Edinburgh University Press, 2013)
What would political thought look like without the foundation of ethics?
This groundbreaking book offers a fresh and innovative perspective on ethics and politics after poststructuralism. Madeleine Fagan argues that the ‘ethical’ should not be understood as a label; it does not mean ‘good’ or ‘right’, and is not an evaluation or guide. Rather, both the ethical and the political are descriptions of the context in which we find ourselves. Fagan offers an account of the inseparability of ethics and politics that challenges existing accounts of poststructuralist ethics and shows the need for a practice-based rethinking of the ethico-political. Drawing on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, Ethics and Politics after Poststructuralism puts forward a radical and far-reaching critique of both foundational and non-foundational ethical theory.
To read more about the book, or order your own copy, click here.
PAIS success in Q-Step programme competition and new BA in Quantitative Methods
Warwick is part of a new £19.5 million Nuffield-ESRC-HEFCE Quantitative Methods programme to transform social science teaching in the UK. The University is one of 15 institutions (selected from a total of 48 who applied across the UK) to be awarded more than £1 million to overhaul its social science teaching, and the only Q-Step Centre in the West Midlands. The ‘Q-Step’ programme is an ambitious intervention to address the critical shortage of social scientists with the quantitative skills needed to evaluate evidence and analyse data.
The 15 universities will form a network of ‘Q-Step Centres’, delivering new undergraduate programmes in quantitative social science. These will include the development of new courses, production of new content for existing courses, experimenting with new ways of teaching, as well as work placements and pathways to postgraduate study.
This funding success has also resulted in the launch of a new BA Politics, International Studies and Quantitative Methods, which is now open for 2014 applications. This will run alongside our existing programmes but also be integrated through attempts to embed quantitative methods in existing modules.
Stagecoach Unibus named after founding PAIS Prof Wilfrid Harrison
Prof Wyn Grant recently attended an event to celebrate the naming of several Stagecoach Unibuses after the founding professors of the University of Warwick on 22 September with Professor J R Sargent and the families of the late Professors Donald Charlton, Malcolm Clark, John Hale, Wilfrid Harrison and Arthur Shercliff.
Prof Grant wrote about his experience at the event below:
The University of Warwick will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2015. One of the founding professors was Wilfrid Harrison of the Department of Politics. Indeed, he was the university's first (and at the time only) pro vice-chancellor. He actually arrived in 1964 and worked out of a house in Gibbett Hill Road to plan the department and help with the planning of the university. His contribution and that of other founding professors was recognised at a recent bus naming ceremony at the University. This was a very pleasant occasion as people were able to share their memories of the pioneering years of the University. Each bus has within it a plaque given a short biography of the founding professor. Wilfrid Harrison was one of the founders of the discipline of politics in Britain and the first editor of Political Studies, the journal of the Political Studies Association.