Since the mid-twentieth century a number of individuals or businesses connected with the university have endowed prizes in subject areas close to their hearts. Each year Heads of Department and the College are asked to nominate suitable candidates, and below are the successful students for the Department of Political and Cultural Studies in 2012. Many congratulations to you all. 

Head of PCS, Professor Jonathan Bradbury and Prize Winners 

Stephanie Parker (International Relations and French): The Edwin Drew Prize

David Higgins (International Relations): The International Relations Prize (for the best final year performance in International Relations)

Ben O’Keeffe (Politics): J C Rees Memorial Prize (for the best final year performance in subjects relating to the theoretical study of politics) 

Ben Redding (War & Society): Bloomsbury War and Society Prize (for the best dissertation by a final year student on a War & Society degree) 

Simon Lavis (Law & American Studies): 3M Dissertation Prize (for the best final year dissertation in American Studies)

Dr. Panayiota Tsatsou, Lecturer in Media and Communication, has published a new article in the journal Technology & Society. The article is titled ‘Why Internet use? A quantitative examination of the role of everyday life and Internet policy and regulation’ and examines how aspects of everyday life and culture, such as resistance to ICTs, and people’s awareness and evaluation of Internet policy and regulation in areas such as online security and privacy can explain Internet use.

More information about the article and ways to access/buy it can be found at:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2011.03.016  

22 June 2011

Dr. Joy Porter has published a new book on Native American Freemasonry with the University of Nabraska Press.

Freemasonry has played a significant role in the history of Native Americans since the colonial era—a role whose extent and meaning are fully explored for the first time in this book. The work’s overarching concern is with how Masonry met specific social and personal needs, a theme developed across three significant periods of membership: the revolutionary era, the last third of the nineteenth century, and the years following the First World War. Joy Porter places Freemasonry into historical context, revealing its social and political impact as a transatlantic phenomenon at the heart of the colonizing process. She then explores its meaning for many of the key Native leaders over time, for the ethnic groups who sought to make connections with it, and for the bulk of its American membership—the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant middle class.

Dr. David Berry co-organised Workshop on Digital Shakespeare with Dr. Tom Cheesman.

The workshop looked at how we might use the new digital tools of text aggregation, processing and information or data visualisation to provide the ways of looking at and thinking about Shakespeare. From making data patterns, to narrativising through algorithms and visualisation the workshop examined how these approaches and methods can assist in undertaking humanities research into textual materials.

For further information, please see here:

Digital Shakespeare  

25 June 2011

Dr. David Berry's research on the Philosophy of Software was featured in an article by Professor Steve Fuller, the Auguste Comte Professor of Social Epistemology, University of Warwick.

In his article, Professor considers 'What The Computer Says About Who We Are'.  

It can be viewed here.

25 May 2011.

Dr. David Berry interviewed Iceland's Constitutional Council last week.  The interviews were part of a research project on Imagined Recovery with Dr. Claes Belfrage of Queen Mary University, London.

For further information please see: http://www.stjornlagarad.is/frettir/lesa/item33289/.

9 May 2011

In January David Bewley-Taylor (American Studies Programme, Political and Cultural Studies) was invited to take part in two events organized by the Amsterdam based Transnational Institute (TNI) Drugs and Democracy Programme.

The first of these was an Expert Seminar on threshold quantities; that is to say the amount of drugs different states consider to be for trafficking rather than personal use.   This was co-hosted with the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) at its office in Lisbon. 

Other participants included staff from the EMCDDA and the WHO, Portuguese government officials, representatives from NGO organizations and other academics, including from the Drug Policy Modelling Programme at the University of New South Wales. The second event was an ‘Informal Policy Dialogue’ also held in Lisbon. 

This was co-hosted with the Portuguese Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction and, as well as those  from the national government including the National Coordinator on Drugs,   participants included a number of diplomats, international civil servants from the UN, the EC and NGO representatives from around the world.

In February, David had the honour of being the first speaker at a Drug Policy Seminar Series run by The Graduate School for Social Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.  Involving over 30 students from the Academy and other academic and issue related organizations, David’s seminar session focussed upon ‘The International Drug Policy Framework: Context, Structure and Contemporary Dynamics’.  

Ongoing research into this issue area also resulted in his involvement in the 54th session of the UN’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) at the United Nation’s Office in Vienna in March.  Here David took part in an NGO satellite event where, with his co-author Martin Jelsma of TNI, he presented the key findings of a new policy report, ‘Fifty Years of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs: A Reinterpretation.’ 

The panel also included Dayana Rios of the Bolivian national delegation to the CND who presented her government’s position on  moves to amend the 1961 Convention so as to allow the chewing of the coca leaf. While in Vienna David was also part of a NGO delegation from the International Drug Policy Consortium that met with the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Under Secretary General, Mr. Yury Fedotov.  Appointed to the post last year, this was the first CND for Mr Fedotov, former Russian Federation ambassador to the UK, and part of the Executive Director’s moves to engage with civil society.

9 May 2011

Dr. Nathan Roger, Research Assistant to the Director of The Callaghan Centre for the Study of Conflict, Power and Empire, publishes a chapter in a new edited book - Creating Destruction: Constructing Images of Violence and Genocide. 

His chapter is entitled: 'Abu Ghraib Abuse Images: From Perverse War Trophies Through Internet Based War Porn to Artistic Representations and Beyond.  The chapter makes a detailed examination of the iconic image of prisoner abuse which has emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. 

The image shows a hooded prisoner, who is holding his arms outstretched - with wires in each hand - in fear of being electrocuted.  This chapter explores the issue that contrary to many previous commentaries on what makes images newsworthy, here it is not the violence.  Rather, this image has managed to maintain its news-value and has obtained the status 'iconic' because of the elusiveness of the images symbolic side.  The image holds explicit references to both the Ku Klux Klan and also Christ's Crucifixion. 

It concludes by showing how the abuse image has now become a powerful weapon against American Foreign Policy and also an effective poster-image for the anti-war lobby who have parodied it on a number of occasions for the purpose of their campaign against the War in Iraq.  So, to sum up briefly, on the iconic image of Abu Ghraib abuses' journey from explicit war trophy through its time on illicit Internet niche war-porn catalogues and its expropriation as an anti-war symbol.  Today, it exists, parodied within the high glamour of Italian Vogue. 

When once images of abuse within war were tabooed - today, such images have successfully crossed over into the mainstream.  This is our current position; we are all complicit through our awareness of these war abuses and indeed the symbolic side of this iconic image from Abu Ghraib.  
 
9 May 2011

Emily Crick was invited to give a presentation at a workshop on ‘Drug Control and Related Security Implications’ at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) in London this month.

Representatives from the UK Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), the Russian Counter Narcotics Agency (FSKN), the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), the Mexican Embassy, the Chinese Embassy, the European Commission and the World Bank discussed how current drug control policies have impacted upon security across the globe.  

The participants also debated what the security implications could be for various alternatives to the current drug control system.

Emily Crick is a MPhil student in the Department of Political and Cultural Studies, supervised by Dr David Bewley-Taylor.

3 May 2011

Dr. David Berry's book, The Philosophy of Software, has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan.

The Philosophy of Software is a critical introduction to the subject of code and software, and develops an understanding of its social and philosophical implications in the digital age.  The book has been written specifically for people interested in the subject from a non-technical background and provides a lively and interesting analysis of these new media forms.  The book argues that software is a tangle, a knot, which ties together the physical and the ephemeral, the material and the ethereal, into a complete system that can be controlled and directed.  However, software exceeds our ability to place limits on its entanglement, for it has in the past decade entered the everyday home through electronic augmentation that has replaced the mechanical world of the twentieth century.  From washing machines to central heating systems, children's toys to television and video; the old electro-magnetic and servo-mechanical world is being revolutionised by the silent logic of virtual devices. It is time, therefore, to examine our virtual situation.

Review:

'This is a beautifully written book that pulls off the difficult task of introducing the subject of software and the workings of code to the non specialist whilst also providing an original take of the philosophical and the cultural importance of Code in contemporary culture.'

- Michael Bull, University of Sussex, UK

4 April 2011

Dr. Alan Finlayson spoke on Radio 4's Today programme about anarchists, Black Bloc the UK Uncut movement in the light of protests in London http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00zt6x6/Today_28_03_2011/ (start at 2:55.15).

28 March 2011

Dr. Toby James has published a new article on New Labour's attempts to raise turnout in the UK 1997-2007.

The UK Labour government sought to 'modernise' elections and introduced innovative new schemes such as all-postal voting, internet voting and rolling registration.  The way that elections had been organised had changed very little since the 1872 Secret Ballot Act.

The research identifies all-postal voting as the reform most likely to increase electoral participation.

The article is called 'Fewer Costs, More Votes? United Kingdom Innovations in Election Administration 2000–2007 and the Effect on Voter Turnout' and published in the Election Law Journal.

It is available for download here.

22 March 2011

Dr. Lee Jarvis, with Dr. Michael Lister of Oxford Brookes University, has disseminated the findings of their ESRC research project to policymakers and civil society stakeholders. In a seminar briefing held in London on 14 January 2011, Lee and Michael highlighted the policy implications of their research into public attitudes towards anti-terrorism measures amongst the UK population. The seminar was attended by members of a range of important organisations including the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism, the Muslim Council of Britain, the Metropolitan Police Authority and the Institute for Race Relations. Dr. Jarvis and Dr. Lister followed this event by disseminating their key findings at the Research Council’s UK Global Uncertainties Programme Strategic Plan Consultation in London; an event attended by civil servants and academics from a range of backgrounds concerned with UK security.

For a recent article addressing some of these themes, here is an open access piece that they recently published on Open Democracy titled ‘The Counter Terrorism Review: Trading Liberty for Security’.

16 February 2011

Professor Roland Axtmann was one of the keynote speakers at a conference on ‘Twenty Years of Research Evaluation in Estonia, 1991-2011' in Tartu, Estonia in January. He attended the conference as a guest of the Estonian government and gave his address in his capacity as chairperson of the panel of international experts that conducted the research evaluation exercise in May 2010. He spoke to an audience of policy-makers and senior administrators in Higher Education Institutions about the panel’s decisions for the 2010 Evaluation Exercise and contributed to discussions on the future of research evaluation in Estonia and on developments in other countries in the EU. Professor Axtmann shared the platform with Professor Paavo Löppönen, Director of Evaluation and Development at the Finnish Academy, and Mr Paul Hubbard, Head of Research Policy at HEFCE.

Professor Axtmann’s involvement with research evaluation of Estonian science goes back to 2008 when he acted as the chair of an international expert group which assisted the Estonian government in setting up seven nation-wide Research Centres of Excellence as part of its research excellence initiative.

While in Tartu, Professor Axtmann met the director of the National Museum of Estonia, Dr Krista Aru, and accepted an invitation to serve on the Museum’s Board of Scientific Advisors.

14 February 2011

Professor Roland Axtmann has been appointed Visiting Professor at the University of Queensland in  Brisbane. He will take up his appointment in the School of Political Science and International Studies in spring. Later in the year, he will join the School of International and Political Studies at Deakin University, Melbourne as Visiting Scholar. While in Australia, Professor Axtmann will continue his studies into globalisation, cosmopolitanism and democracy and conduct research into 'The democratic legitimacy of global governance and the project of global constitutionalism'. Professor Axtmann has also been invited to Sydney University where he will present aspects of his current research.

9 February 2011

During his recent visit to Estonia, Professor Roland Axtmann visited the Institute of Political Science and Governance at Tallinn University, with which the department has a long-standing collaboration. He spoke about his current research in the area of globalisation and transnationalisation and held a staff seminar on 'Cosmopolitanism as Political Philosophy and Social Theory'.

31 January 2010

The schedule for Departmental Seminar has been announced for spring 2011.  Please click here for further information.

5 February 2011

Dr Toby James has won two research awards to undertake research on the use of performance monitors in election administration.

His research project has been generously funded by a Nuffield Foundation Small Research Grant of £13,920 and a further McDougall Trust award of £2,500.

The Electoral Administration Act 2006 introduced a system of performance monitoring for local government officials involved in the administration of elections.  These have been developed and implemented by the Electoral Commission.

The scheme is internationally significant because few democracies have introduced such schemes, yet remain concerned about the way that elections are administered.

Problems with election administration were highlighted in the 2010 general election when voters were turned away from polling stations.

19 January 2010

Professor Roland Axtmann  will give a visiting lecture on "Cosmopolitanism as Social Theory" on Tue 25th of January 2011 to the Institute of Social Research at the University of Tampere.

7 January 2010

New research which identifies how the administrative methods used to conduct elections can affect voter turnout has been published by Dr Toby James, Political and Cultural Studies lecturer in Swansea University’s College of Arts and Humanities.

The study, which concentrates on the administrative systems through which the electoral register is compiled and how votes are cast and counted, has led Dr James to construct a classification system of forms of election administration and their known impact on voter turnout.

Dr James said: “In recent years a number of democracies, including the UK, have sought to reform election administration either to improve voter participation or reduce opportunities for electoral fraud.

“This study provides an examination of existing research in this field, which has mainly focused on American elections, and provides a useful source of methods to increase voter participation.

“The classification system is a practical tool which can help policy-makers and practitioners identify measures which could increase voter turnout in elections.”

Dr James’s study found procedures that boost voter turnout are election-day registration, all-postal voting, and internet voting. In contrast those measures which restrict voter participation include early registration deadlines, infrequent updates to the register, and identification requirements.

In the UK alone, internet voting, text message voting and postal voting have all been experimented with in the last 10 years and the UK currently has plans to change the registration process from household to individual registration in time for the next general election.

The full research article, entitled 'Electoral Administration and Voter Turnout: Towards an International Public Policy Continuum', has been published by Representation, the journal of Representative Democracy.

To view the article visit http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a929546276~frm=titlelink

For more information about the research, email Toby James at  t.s.james@swansea.ac.uk or visit www.tobysjames.com

For more information on Swansea University’s Department of Political and Cultural Studies visit http://www.swansea.ac.uk/politics/

9 December 2010

Dr Gerard Clarke presented a paper on Democracy and Social Participation in the Philippines as an invited speaker at the first international conference of the Ruth Cardoso Centre at the University of Sao Paulo in November 2010.

Named in memory of the distinguished anthropologist and social activist who died in 2008, the centre is a collaboration between the University of Sao Paulo and Alfasol, a prominent Brazilian NGO involved in grass-roots development, and functions as a think tank promoting research on pro-poor civil society initiatives.

It celebrates the life of a woman who became a national icon in the late 1990s when, as wife of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brazil’s President from 1995 to 2003), she served as Brazil’s First Lady and championed the cause of civil society participation in government programmes.

Other speakers at the conference included Gracha Machel (political activist and wife of Nelson Mandela) and Fernando Henrique Cardoso (a prominent political scientist and sociologist before he became President) .

While in Sao Paulo, Dr Clarke also participated in a seminar on Development and Human Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa at the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Institute.   

2 December 2010 

• Picture 1: Gracha Machel and Fernando Henrique Cardoso speaking at the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Institute.
• Picture 2: Gerard Clarke with Fernando Henrique Cardoso, President of Brazil 1995-2003.
• Picture 3: Gerard Clarke speaking at the first international conference of the Ruth Cardoso Centre at the University of Sao Paulo. To his left is the Brazilian sociologist and political scientist Prof. Elisa Reis.

During a research visit to Germany in November 2010, Professor Roland Axtmann delivered  lectures at the Technical University Chemnitz and at Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg. He spoke about 'Globalisation, cosmopolitanism and comparative politics'.

1 December 2010

Dr. Lee Jarvis was invited to present his research on state terrorism to a recent seminar at King’s College London run in association with the Jean Monet Centre of Excellence. The co-authored paper with Dr. Michael Lister (Oxford Brookes University) is titled ‘Western State Terrorism: Towards an Expansionary Approach?’. In it, Lee and Michael present the case for a far broader approach to state terrorism than that typically employed by advocates of this concept.

17 November 2010

PCS Research student Emily Crick has become a Research Associate at the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy.

Emily studied history at London University and has Masters degrees in South Asian studies and Security and Development. She worked in the international media for ten years including stints at Reuters and NBC News. Emily also spent time working at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in India.  She spent two years as a research associate at Transform Drugs Policy Foundation and in October began work on an MPhil analysing the relationship between drugs and international security within the Department of Political and Cultural Studies.

21 October 2010

Dr Claire Malcolm has recently joined the Department of Political and Cultural Studies. 

Claire recently completed her PhD at Cardiff University. Building on an MA dissertation which focused on critical approaches to humanitarian intervention, her PhD thesis combined her key interests (intervention, international justice, post-positivist theory and gender) into an appraisal of a ‘Constructed Duty of Justice’ at work across international society. As well as researching the broad disciplines of politics and international relations, she has also taught extensively in these fields and have worked as a tutor in both Cardiff University and the University of Glamorgan; specialising in IR, Political Theory, International Political Economy and Globalisation.

20 October 2010

Dr Krijn Peters has recently presented his research on armed conflict and post-war reconstruction in Africa.  The presentations were given at University College London and the University of Sussex. Dr. Peters has also been invited to speak at two conferences in November, first in Copenhagen and later that week in Barcelona.

The presentations details are as follows:

• 15 October: “People’s Courts & Jungle Justice. How the RUF’s popular justice failed to address structural social injustices for a youthful underclass in Sierra Leone”, University College of London, Department of Anthropology, seminar series
• 19 October: “The right to fight: child soldiers in Sierra Leone and Liberia”, University of Sussex, Department of Anthropology, seminar series
• 1-3 November: “Conflict and Fragile Contexts”, The Danish Institute for International Studies, conference: Access to Justice and Security. Non-State Actors and the Local Dynamics of Ordering
• 3-5 November “Demobilisation and reintegration of former Combatants: experiences from Liberia and Sierra Leone”, International Catalan Institute for Peace, conference: Peace, Conflict and Security in Africa: new challenges and new perspectives.

21 October

On 24 September Dr Jonathan Bradbury gave a presentation on 'Centre Government relations with the Welsh Assembly Government and the Forthcoming Referendum on Further Powers' at the Constitution Unit, University College London. 

The seminar was concerned with Intergovernmental Relations in the United Kingdom and was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. 

It was attended by academics from a number of countries and officials from the Ministry of Justice, H.M.Treasury, the Scottish Executive and the Welsh Assembly Government. 

12 October 2010

Dr. Panayiota Tsatsou, Lecturer in the Department of Political and Cultural Studies, published a book chapter entitled ‘Role of social culture in evaluation of Internet policies. The case of everyday and resistant culture in Greece’.

This chapter is published in the Handbook of Research on Information Communication Technology Policy: Trends, Issues and Advancements (Editor: E.E. Adomi), IGI Global) and discusses the role of social culture in the evaluation of ICT policies and specifically of Internet policies.

It draws on the case of the Greek Information Society and on the exceptionally low levels of Internet adoption in the country, exploring the role of social culture in the ways in which Internet users and non-users in Greece evaluate Internet policies and the role of these policies in their decision to adopt the Internet or not. The chapter reports on the findings obtained from surveying 1,000 Greek users and non-users of the Internet. For more information see at: http://www.igi-global.com/Bookstore/Chapter.aspx?TitleId=45414

5 October 2010

Dr David M. Berry was invited to give a lecture on 'Supercritical Creativity and Intellectual Property Rights' at the Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (ELMCIP) project in September 20-21, 2010 at the University of Bergen.

Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (ELMCIP) is a 3-year collaborative research project which runs from 2010-2013. The project is funded under HERA joint research project theme: ’Humanities as a Source of Creativity and Innovation’.

For further information, please see: http://elmcip.net/.

5 October 2010.

Dr. Panayiota Tsatsou has published a review of the following title: Stephen Coleman and Jay G. Blumler, The Internet and Democratic Citizenship: Theory, Practice and Policy. The review appears in Media, Culture & Society (Vol. 32, Issue 5)  and can be accessed at http://mcs.sagepub.com/content/current.

5 October 2010

The British Political Speech Website was launched last week by Dr. Alan Finlayson and Dr. Judi Atkins. 

www.britishpoliticalspeech.org – is a unique online interactive archive of British political speech and an important place for all those interested in learning more about the history and practice of political speech and rhetoric.

It is the first site dedicated to recording all kinds of British political speech, putting the speeches in their historical context and offering analysis of politicans’ rhetorical styles.

The archive has texts of speeches given by Conservative, Labour and Liberal/Liberal Democrat Party leaders going back to 1895, and will expand to include more speeches from all political parties.

The project was supported by The Leverhulme Trust and also by the Centre for the Study of Culture and Politics and RIAH at Swansea.

Further inforamation: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/news_centre/LatestResearch/Headline,51078,en.php

28 September 2010

Toby James and Dave McKenna presented papers at the Interpreting Democratic Governance Conference held at the Local Governance Research Unit, De Montfort University, on 23rd and 24th September.

Toby James presented a paper entitled: 'Fewer Costs, More Votes? UK Innovations in Election Administration 2000-2007 and their Effect on Voter Turnout'. 

Dave McKenna presented a paper on 'Using Local Statecraft to Explain the Attitudes and Behaviours of Local Political Elites Toward Public Participation Initiatives' (link).

28 September 2010

On 16 September, Dr David Berry, member of the Callaghan Centre for the Study of Conflict, Power and Empire and the Department of Political and Cultural Studies at Swansea, talked to Good Morning Wales on BBC Radio Wales about the case of Private Bradley Manning and the leaking of US military documents to Wikileaks.

Click here to listen.

The text version of the news story can be found here.

20 September

Dave McKenna, PhD candidate in the Department of Political and Cultural Studies has won the award for the best postgraduate paper presented at the 2010 Public Administration Conference.

The conference was held at the Nottingham Conference Centre, Nottingham Trent University between 6–8 September. The conference explored the theme of Public Administration in an Era of Austerity and included papers on all aspects of public service organisation and delivery.

The Public Administration Committee is the United Kingdom’s learned society for the study of public administration and related subjects.

Dave's paper was titled: 'Using Local Statecraft to Explain the Attitudes and Behaviours of Local Political Elites Toward Public Participation Initiatives'. 

15 September 2010

Staff in the Department of Political and Cultural Studies have recently been awarded ESRC research training grants.

Dr Panayiota Tsatsou was awarded in May 2010 an ESRC Training Bursary for attending a Higher Course in Statistics at the University of Hertfordshire, UK (June 2010).  Dr Toby James was awarded an ESRC Training Bursary for attending an Essex University Summer School research methods course (July 2010).

19 August 2010

Dr Panayiota Tsatsou presented a paper entitled ‘Developments in EU policy and regulation for electronic communications: a critical review’ at the IAMCR Conference 2010: Communication and Citizenship (18-22 July 2008, Braga, Portugal). Her paper has been invited for publication in the Observatorio (OBS*) e-journal, an open access interdisciplinary peer-reviewed academic publication in the field of Communication Studies (for more, see at http://obs.obercom.pt).

19 August 2010

The Department of Political and Cultural Studies recently celebrated the happiest time of the academic year: the graduation of its undergraduate and postgraduate students!

The Head of Department of Political and Cultural Studies, Dr. Jonathan Bradbury, is pictured with this years prize winning graduating students in Politics.

16 August 2010

A new Facebook group has been launched for Politics and International Relations Facebook alunmi. 

For further information, please see: http://www.swan.ac.uk/artsandhumanities/NewsCentre/LatestNewsandEvents/

16 August 2010

On Friday 23rd July three Politics and International Relations students left for The Gambia, West Africa, to undertake a 4 week project to develop an understanding of the inter-dependency between ill health and broader development and environmental issues.  The students included MA students from the Department of Political and Cultural Studies.

They are working alongside students from Gambia University and Medical School to develop a partnership of knowledge with a specific focus on the global issue of malnutrition.

If you would like to read more about the project, and see photographs and short films documenting the student’s progress, you can follow them on the project blog, at www.swanseagambialinkproject2010.blogspot.com

16 August 2010

Dr Lee Jarvis (Swansea University) and Dr Michael Lister (Oxford Brookes University) recently hosted an ESRC-funded workshop on Anti-Terrorism, Citizenship and Security in the UK (15-16 July 2010). The workshop brought together a number of high-profile scholars from across the country with an interest in these themes, and included a wide range of papers exploring the political, cultural and social impacts of contemporary anti-terrorism policy and legislation.

21 July 2010

Jonathan Bradbury was a visiting research fellow at the Social Science Research Institute, Yonsei University, South Korea during a visit in June.  He gave a paper on ‘State development and regional decentralisation in Europe’ at Yonsei University on June 10; and an address on ‘Regional decentralisation and local government reform’ at the Korean Association for Governance and Public Policy’ in Mokpo on June 11. 

29 June 2010

Dr. Lee Jarvis has published a new article in the Journal of War and Culture Studies: 'Remember, Remember, 11 September: Memorializing 9/11 on the Internet'.

The article explores a series of Internet memorials commemorating the attacks of 11 September 2001, arguing that they signal an interesting and potentially important mnemonic shift within social memory practices.

Lee concludes his discussion by locating these memorials at the intersection of two political logics: the first, a politics of symbolic exchange; the second a promissory politics of hope.

29 June 2010

Jonathan Bradbury addressed a conference on the 2010 UK General Election, organised by the Centre for British Politics, Nottingham University on 4 June.  His paper on ‘Wales and the General Election’ will be published in a special edition of Parliamentary Affairs in Autumn 2010 as well as Oxford University Press volume, Britain Decides 2010.

Jonathan Bradbury was also recently a plenary speaker at the inaugural WISERD conference, held at Cardiff University on 28-29 June.  In collaboration with Rhys Andrews he spoke on ‘Devolution and national identity in Wales: issues for research’.  He also co-authored a paper with Ian Stafford, a Cardiff WISERD research fellow on ‘The devolution of transport powers in Wales’. 

29 June 2010

Jonathan Bradbury has published ‘Jim Bulpitt’s Territory and Power in the United Kingdom and interpreting political development: bringing the state and temporal analysis back in’ in the July edition of the international journal, Government and Opposition. 

He is also the co-editor with Peter John of this special edition of the journal on Jim Bulpitt’s classic work Territory and Power, which was re-issued by the European Consortium for Political Research in their Classic Texts series in 2008.  The articles were originally presented as papers at the American Political Science Association Meeting in Boston in 2008.

29 June 2010

Dr. Toby James has published an article in June’s issue of British Politics titled: ‘Electoral modernisation or elite statecraft: Electoral administration in the United Kingdom 1997–2007’. 

The article outlines the reforms that New Labour made to electoral administration while in power.  It questions their motives for the reforms and provides evidence that key ministers felt that the Party could gain electoral advantage by introducing or blocking particular reforms.

He also has an article on electoral administration forthcoming in September’s issue of Political Studies Review.  This provides a critical review of some of the latest research on electoral administration from the USA and calls for further research outside of the US.  The article is available here.

4 June 2010

Dr. Lee Jarvis has published a new article in Contemporary Politics titled ‘Stakeholder Security: The New Western Way of Counter-Terrorism?’. The article explores the increasing tendency towards citizen-driven counter-terrorism initiatives, and the political and normative issues this raises. It is the first output from the ESRC project ‘Anti-Terrorism, Citizenship and Security in the UK’ on which Lee has been working with Dr. Michael Lister of Oxford Brookes University.

4 June 2010

Dr. Jonathan Bradbury has recently published articles in two international journals.

• Jonathan Bradbury and Rhys Andrews, ‘State devolution and national identity: continuity and change in the politics of Welshness and Britishness in Wales’, Parliamentary Affairs, 63,2, 2010, 229-249

This forms part of a special edition on The Politics of Britishness, edited by Andrew Mycock and Catherine McGlynn.  It is based on papers presented in PSA conferences in Manchester and Huddersfield in 2009 and also features Chrstopher Bryant (this year’s O’Donnell lecturer in the University of Wales), James McAuley, Jonathan Tonge, Murray Leith, Varun Uberoi, Tariq Modood and Chris Gifford. 

• Jonathan Bradbury and Ian Stafford ‘Legislating for incremental devolution: the case of UK devolution of transport powers to Wales’, Public Money and Management, 30, 2, 2010, 97-102

This is based on research funded by a Board of Celtic Studies Social Science committee grant and was originally presented as a paper at the annual PAC conference at the University of Glamorgan in September 2009.

20 April 2010

Dr. Lee Jarvis has recently presented early findings from his ESRC project on Anti-terrorism, Citizenship and Security in the UK to the PSA Annual Conference in Edinburgh and to the International Relations, Politics and Sociology Departmental Seminar Series at Oxford Brookes University.

The research papers, co-presented with Dr. Michael Lister, traced the emergence of different discourses of security within attempts to understand the UK’s efforts at countering terrorism.

They also outlined some of the most important impacts of contemporary anti-terrorism policy including practices of self-censorship and surveillance, and the creation of horizontal and vertical suspicion within the UK.

Information on the project is available on the ESRC website.

12 April 2010

Dr. Alan Collins has recently presented research to the RSIS-Macarthur Conference on Regional Security Cooperation, held at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

The conference focussed on the role of ASEAN in building security in the region.

Dr. Collins suggested that functional cooperation occurs over non-sensitive (non-national security) issues in the arena of low politics. His hypothesis is that successful cooperation in one area can cause an over-spill into another and, assuming all goes well, this can spiral in both quantity of cooperative arrangements and qualitatively in what states are cooperating about. He suggested that ASEAN’s response to HIV/AIDS could be an instance of functional cooperation that has the potential to require a harmonization of domestic politics among the ASEAN membership.

The conference proceedings are available online here.

31 March 2010

Dr. Panayiota Tsatsou has published a new book chapter on the digital divides in Greece.

This book chapter draws on the scholarly literature on digital divides as well as on various policy schools and paradigms to argue that the existence of digital divides in Greece is to a significant extent a result of both culture and regulation. Data and evidence concerning the Greek puzzle of digital divides allow this chapter to apply a general socio-cultural and regulatory account to a case-study that is of particular interest, since it entails significant implications for future research on digital divides in Europe. 

‘Digital Divides in Greece: role of culture and regulation. Implications for the European Information Society’, in L. Fortunati, J. Vincent, J. Gebhardt, A. Petrovcic, & O. Vershinskaya (Eds.) Interacting with Broadband Society. Berlin: Peter Lang.

Further details are available here:

25 March 2010

Three Politics and International Relations students are amongst those from the University that will be undertaking international development placements in Gambia this summer.

The project is intended to enhance graduate employability by providing in-depth experience of international health and development. It is also intended to commence a process of evaluation of the impact of 20 Wales for Africa Health Links (part of UK Africa Health Links with a total of 100 links). The Welsh Assembly Government Wales for Africa Programme commits all NHS Trusts and other institutions in Wales to contribute to achieving Millennium Development Goals. The mechanism is through partnerships (“Links”) between health professionals in Wales and Africa, partnerships which are intended to result in mutual learning processes of practices and contexts of health provision.

A team of 9 students has been selected from the Schools of Medicine, Human and Health Sciences and Arts and Humanities and awarded with University scholarships to participate. The three students that have been selected from Arts and Humanities are MA students in the Department of Political and Cultural Studies. The project is linked to the Swansea-Gambia Link and, more broadly, to the Wales for Africa Health Links Group. The team is led by Professor Stephen Allen (Medicine), Dr. Cassam Tengnah (Health Sciences) and Dr. Claes Belfrage (Arts and Humanities).

During the Spring of 2010, the team will receive preparatory orientation and training from the team leadership and will also be required to undertake a limited amount of independent research regarding key issues such as case study methodology.

Research work will be undertaken in The Gambia, West Africa for 4 weeks beginning in the last week of July 2010. The student group will focus on a sick child as a case study and consider the immediate causes and broader underlying pathways that have resulted in the child’s illness. This will involve sensitive research and discussions with key people such as the children’s parents/carers, health workers, community members (including policy-makers and Health link administrators). The students will work alongside their peers from the School of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences and the School of Social Sciences, University of The Gambia.

Before leaving The Gambia, the team will be required to contribute to a report summarising the findings and making recommendations that might develop the work of the Swansea-Gambia Link.

Please contact Sian Impey for further information:

Sian Impey, Internationalisation Development Manager (Tel: 01792 602780) and Charlotte Dix, International Project Officer (Tel: 01792 295850), Internationalisation Office

17 March 2010

Lee Jarvis has published a new article with the influential think tank RUSI. 

The piece, ‘Speaking of Terrorism: Gordon Brown’s War of Words’, forms part of a special issue of RUSI’s Monitor dedicated to counter-terrorism. 

In the article, Lee critically explores the current British government’s use of language in relation to terrorism specifically, and security more broadly.

15 February 2010

2009-2010 archive

2008-2009 archive