Call for Papers - Early Career and Postgraduate Research Workshop 2019

IR is changing: an emphasis on the everyday is now more visible, and ethnographic approaches are more frequently deployed by researchers seeking to understand lived experience. Important questions remain, however. Why is fieldwork still marginal in the discipline? Why do numbers trump human stories? What does it mean to become ‘fluent in fieldwork’? What is good/ethical/responsible fieldwork today and how has International Politics equipped you (or limited you) as a researcher in doing such fieldwork? The continuum of ethical fieldwork ranges from meeting institutional guidelines and getting the approval of the ethics committee at a minimum; to more extensive approaches arguing for the need to ‘give back’ to research participants as a means of best practice. Full details available here.

As the ontological turn in the study of International Politics grows, so does the diversity of the intellectual and philosophical traditions we use to enliven ontological discussions and inspire ontological assertions. These range from a restatement of various humanisms to the explicitly post-human, absorbing along the way postcolonial approaches, calls to rethink ontology in conversation with the physical and biological sciences, and variously articulated commitments to religious worldviews. The explicit discussion of a number of these areas of ontology is growing, and whilst work is increasingly conducted under different strands of ontology, they are seldom brought together as common members of this fundamental area of study. For more information on this workshop please click here. 

Academia is often charged with the critique of producing knowledge in an “ivory tower” but are the voices of those involved in the pursuit of social change different from those who seek to understand global challenges? Many of us perceive our research projects as a form of activism to find new ways of addressing global challenges. This workshop explores the nexus between academic knowledge and political practices. We will analyse how postgraduate researchers and early career scholars have used or intend to use their academic research to influence political practices with regard to global challenges. For more information on this workshop please click here.

Emma Kast of Aberystwyth University will be leading a workshop on critical pedagogy in international politics. A successful course is thought to be one in which teachers have "taught" and students have "learned." But how do we measure such things? Why are the failure to teach, and the failure to learn, such pervasive problems in the academy? Further, as teachers and students of international politics in Western institutions, we tend to avow our commitment to democracy. Yet, we do not often critically evaluate the extent to which the structure of higher education in which we participate is itself democratic. For instance, could some of our everyday classroom practices like marking and attendance policies be considered authoritarian? Finally, we may speak of cultivating resistance to oppression; but how might we better recognize the resistance that already exists within ourselves, our students, and our teachers, even in the microcosm of the classroom? What do we "do" with it? In this workshop, we will discuss these themes and other pedagogical issues that participants wish to bring to light, alongside a reading (to be circulated). For more information on this workshop, please contact Emma Kast at emk11@aber.ac.uk. This event is organised by the Critical and Cultural Politics and Racialisation Aberystwyth University research group. https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/interpol/research/research-groups/criticalandculturalpoliticsgroup/