Society & Culture Funded Projects
Trevor McCrisken and Charlie Price: Society & Culture Spotlight funded workshop in Gothenburg
Using funds secured from the Warwick Society & Culture Spotlight Seed Grant Scheme, Trevor McCrisken and Charlie Price from PAIS ran a workshop on Popular Culture, Global Politics and the Generation of IR Knowledge at the University of Gothenburg on March 27th.
Their session “From Kekistan With Love” focused on how research and teaching in international studies can help cultivate a knowledgeable and engaged citizenry. They discussed how disparate yet interconnected aspects of culture and international relations can be utilised through research and teaching to deepen the conversation around the relevance of popular culture in international studies and its ability to generate international relations knowledge.
They tackled a wide range of questions including how people experience international relations in their everyday lives; What role is played by representations of international politics and global affairs in cultural outputs and activities?; Does the exposure of audiences globally to international relations related ideas and scenarios in films, television programmes, popular music, video games, novels, comic books, internet memes, football terrace chants, and other cultural products help to cultivate an engaged and knowledgeable citizenry, or does it breed disengagement?; and how do cultural representations and exchanges impact policymakers and the discourses they construct to sell policies to each other and their publics?
The lively discussion ranged across Oliver Stone’s film JFK to the James Bond franchise, from The Handmaid’s Tale to the Harry Potter book series, and to the online worlds of Polandball, Swedenball, and the fictional state of Kekistan. Trevor and Charlie are now working with their hosts Anja Karlsson Franck, Maria Stern, and Richard Georgi at the School of Global Studies to develop a collaborative research project.
Our plan is to apply for funding to further our joint research with our Gothenburg colleagues. We're keen to invite the Gothenburg team to Warwick in the autumn.