Continuity versus change in Japan’s security and defence policies (International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group) Room: Fortissimo, Hyatt On 16 December 2022, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio’s administration published three strategic documents meant to “dramatically transform Japan’s national security policy after the end of WWII”: the National Security Strategy (NSS), the National Defense Strategy (NDS) and the Defense Buildup Program, with key changes including increasing the defence budget to the third largest globally and adoption of a ‘counter-strike’ doctrine. In light of what the NSS calls a “historical inflection point and in the face of the most severe and complex security environment since the end of WWII”, this panel brings together papers to consider several key implications of the three strategic documents, in terms of partnerships with other like-minded states, joint and ever-growing multilateral military exercises, shaping the regional security environment, deterrence, defence industrial and tech reforms including outer space. On the basis of their analysis, it reviews continuity and change in Japan's defense posture.

Contours of Contemporary Nuclear Dynamics: Challenges and strategies (Global Nuclear Order Working Group) Room: Dolce, Hyatt Contours of Contemporary Nuclear Dynamics: Challenges and strategies

Counter-Terrorism in Civic Spaces (Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group) Room: Justham, Symphony Hall This panel brings together papers that explore the relationship between 'everyday' and civic spaces and counter-terrorism/ counter-extremism.

Explaining and Preventing Civil War Recurrence (University of Birmingham, School of Government Conflict and Peace Processes Research Group) Room: Room 103, Library Civil war is the most frequent and destructive form of armed conflict today. Nearly a third of societies that have experienced one civil war also experience a second or a third war. As a consequence, ninety per cent of the civil wars in the first decade of the twenty-first century were recurrences of previous civil wars. Despite the destructive consequences of civil war recurrence, much remains to be learned about the factors leading to the resumption of widespread violence after a peace accord and about the interventions and agreement provisions preventing the breakdown of political agreements. The papers in this panel adopt different methodological approaches to explore a variety of factors related with recurrence of civil war, including the design of negotiations and accords, the role of women, the impact of elections and of third-party intervention, and the role of former military commanders. It hopes to open a broader debate on ways to explain and prevent the recurrence of civil wars across the globe.

Foreign policy analysis: Cases and Concepts (Foreign Policy Working Group) Room: Concerto, Hyatt A panel consisting of papers focusing on the different influences and objectives on foreign policies of states.

Gender, race and capitalism (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Drawing Room, Hyatt A panel on the theme of gender, race and capitalism

IPE and the current world (dis)order (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Jane How, Symphony Hall This roundtable aims to provide a forum within which to discuss how critical international political economy can inform our understanding of the current world (dis)order. Capitalist crises continue to proliferate. From the Climate Crisis, through the Covid crisis, and on to the Polycrisis. This is Disaster Capitalism. It sees the decaying global order being replaced with multipolar militarization: "forever wars", the Russian neocolonial invasion of Ukraine, the horrific mass killings of civilians amidst the reinvigorated Israel-Palestine conflict, military uprisings across Africa, and heightened geo-political tensions in the Asia-Pacific. Advances in technology take the form of automated alienation. The ongoing drive for expansion creates yet more degradation of our planet and the climate disaster worsens by the year. It is in this context of extreme levels of global disorder that we seek to draw upon critical traditions in international political economy in order to understand, explain, and help transform, disaster capitalism.

Internal Affairs of Asia: An elusive balance of regional and domestic instruments (International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group) Room: Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange Do Asian states from Pakistan to Japan struggle to balance their domestic and regional agendas? This panel examines scholarly responses to this critical question depicting individual regional states' policy-making.

Managing information, narratives and identities in Ukraine and Russia (Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group) Room: Room 101, Library This panel will present on managing information, narratives and identities in Ukraine and Russia

Race, religion, justice and the economy in Southern Africa (Africa and International Studies Working Group) Room: Room 105, Library This panel showcases some fascinating and very contemporary detailed empirical research on Southern Africa and Rwanda. Its papers explore South African foreign policy post-1994, uses post-colonial theory to examine J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace as an allegory of South Africa’s ‘Truth & Reconciliation Commission, cultural and creative constructions of transitional justice in post-genocide Rwanda, Pentecostalism and political femininities in Zimbabwe, and entrepreneurship in the informal economy in urban Zambia.

Reframing British Politics: Lessons from International Relations (International Relations as a Social Science Working Group) Room: Exec 1, ICC In this roundtable speakers will reflect on some of the ongoing silences and marginalisations in the study of British Politics around questions of race, colonialism, migration, gender, sexuality, and disability as well as to consider what lessons (if any) can be drawn from International Relations in centering these questions. We consider the particular contributions that feminist, queer, post- and decolonial IR could make in building a more inclusive and critical study of the UK in a global context.

Security Partnerships in Comparative Perspective (European Journal of International Security) Room: Room 102, Library States often pursue their security and strategic interests through partnerships with other state or non-state actors. The variation of security partnerships is tremendous: building the military capacity of partner forces such as US efforts from the Middle East to Latin America, and beyond; state use of non-state security assistance actors such as private military companies like the Wagner Group; providing external support (often military assistance) to rebel groups. Working through third parties to accomplish security objectives is a risky trade off and often balances opportunities and risks for the sponsor state. This panel will explore various security partnerships, the dynamics that characterize these relationships, and the dilemmas that sponsors and agents face when pursuing their security objectives through the effort of others.

Sexual violence in military institutions (Critical Military Studies Working Group) Room: Exec 9, ICC Despite repeated claims by military institutions that they adopt a ‘zero tolerance’ approach, sexual violence within these organisations remains a serious and pervasive problem. This panel engages with the perennial issue of military sexual violence from a range of perspectives. Some of the papers engage with institutional responses to sexual violence within military ranks, exploring the workings of the British Service Justice System as well as how the British military has attempted to reform its procedures. Others explore military sexual violence specifically in relation to peacekeepers, paying attention to how gendered dynamics within peacekeeping operations underpin the continuation of this form of sexual exploitation and abuse. Finally, the panel also looks at the politics of how military sexual violence is storied in public narratives, paying specific attention to its depoliticization.

Strengthening the Evidentiary Foundations of Conflict Research (Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism) Room: Exec 10, ICC Collecting conflict data of sufficient quantity and quality is difficult, especially when data collection takes place during an ongoing conflict (while the study of historical conflicts brings its own challenges), and it is difficult in many different ways with many different implications for research practice and knowledge production. Improving the collection of the evidence upon which knowledge about conflict is built will benefit from a dialogue between researchers who use various methodologies and approaches so as to identify key problems, share best practices, and develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of common challenges. The focus of this Roundtable is the collection and generation of data and evidence in conflict research, broadly conceived, rather than on its analysis because the former is too often neglected in favour of methodological sophistication. The Roundtable will showcase cutting-edge and innovative work in order to stimulate a wider conversation about how to do difficult data collection well and how to support the processes by which high quality evidence is generated.

Taking stock of Feminist Foreign Policy - embedded or expendable? (Gendering International Relations Working Group) Room: Sonata, Hyatt Over a dozen countries have now adopted a feminist approach to their global affairs. Whilst there has been much academic attention paid to the normative basis of these claims, there has perhaps been less attention paid to the process by which these countries’ came to adopt such policies, and how they are playing out. This panel takes stock of certain key case study countries, notably Germany, Mexico, Canada and Scotland. How are these countries adopting FFP? How is it changing their international relations? How have these policies been developed and how do they relate to national politics? What have been the successes and failures of these policies?

Technology, Climate and Insecurity in the Transformations of International Order (Environment Working Group) Room: Exec 5, ICC In an international political context where solutions and quick fixes to the multiple intersecting crises of the Anthropocene are, on the part of the powerful, framed predominantly in technological terms, scholars across a range of disciplines have increasingly turned to charting the role of technologies in the making and governance of international order. Taking inspiration from, among others, science and technology studies and environmental history, such accounts can potentially tell us a great deal about the intersection of technological change and relations of power, as well as how asymmetries in the making and modification of planetary ecosystems have transformed our understandings of global interdependence. This panel seeks to build on such accounts, and critiques of, the world-making capacity of technological change by foregrounding its distinctly international dimensions, and particularly the consequences of a transforming international political landscape for the emergence of, among others, new globalities, global governance objects, and insecurities. Moreover, it attempts to bring this approach into dialogue with, but also to reach more broadly than, a principle concern with climate change to explore how the discovery, invention and emergence of a global climate was both constituted by, and reflected upon, these international shifts.

The Micro-dynamics of peace and conflict (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Boardroom, The Exchange This panel is interested in micro-sociological approaches to peace and conflict. Its focus on the micro-dynamics of everyday encounter in conflict-affected contexts allows the papers to unpack the tactical agency deployed in everyday life in three post-accord case study countries: Lebanon, Northern Ireland and Colombia. The papers raise important methodological and epistemological questions that apply across International Studies about levels of analysis and imposed and supposed hierarchies whereby the micro-sociological is regarded as a category somehow 'sub-ordinate' to other categories. The papers that comprise the panel have a particular focus on agency or the extent to which individuals and communities are (dis)empowered through structural and proximate factors. This raises issues of structure and agency and the usefulness of such terms in complex conflict ecosystems. The panel contains a mix of early career, more established scholars, and practitioners.

The Politics of Emotions in International Relations (Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group) Room: Dhani Prem, The Exchange In recent years, scholarly attention in the field of international relations has increasingly focused on uncovering the intricate dynamics of the politics of emotions. Expanding upon this evolving research trajectory, our panel explores through a synthesis of diverse theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches the nuanced interplay between individual, collective, and structural emotional dynamics. This concerted effort enables a comprehensive examination of the micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis, revealing their interwoven nature and reciprocal influence. By shedding light on the complex mechanisms that govern the regulation and expression of emotions within the political sphere, our discussion aims to foster a deeper understanding of how actors attempt to navigate collective affective dynamics whilst simultaneously being influenced by them. In other words, the panel explores how the politics of emotions is a multi-level affair in which embodied experiences, anticipation of collective affective dynamics, expectations regarding appropriate feelings and expressions thereof intermingle. Consequently, the panel seeks to unravel the nuanced and often understated roles played by emotions as both instruments and outcomes of political contestation.

The colonially of movement: Mobilities, migration and empire (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange The coloniality of contemporary migration regimes is widely acknowledged in critical work on global politics and mobilities. This panel explores, on the one hand, how attentiveness to colonial histories and present-day realities can inform understandings of people in movement. And, on the other hand, it explores how colonial and racialised notions of movement have been uncritically introduced into current theorisations of International Relations (IR) and Migration and Border Studies, reinforcing IR’s colonial and white locus of enunciation. In so doing, the panel: 1) interrogates how the control and governance of movement shape international politics, producing and reinforcing racial hierarchies and undergirding persistent colonial forms of colonial and imperial subjection, violence, and (dis)possession; 2) uncovers the multiple ways in which the study of people in movement speaks to theory-building work on race, racialised internationalism, empire, and postcolonial politics; and 3) challenges current theorisations of movement in International Relations.

What does an International Studies with and for young people look like? (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Stuart Hall, The Exchange Around the world, children and youth are disproportionately impacted by conflict, violence, disaster, and crises. Yet their persistent exclusion from both policy and academic considerations is notable. Children and youth are rarely seen as competent actors, and even more rarely as having expertise about their own lives and circumstances. In recent years, there has been increased academic attention to the roles that young people can play in responding to the most pressing global issues; and concomitantly, more attention on policy and practices to ensure that interventions, engagements and supports foreground considerations of risk mitigation and protection as well as enabling environments for their participation. However, while international studies has increasingly recognised the value of careful, reciprocal attention to communities and populations traditionally rendered marginal in the discipline; the exclusion of young people has persisted. Taking up BISA’s theme of ‘whose international studies?’, this roundtable brings together established and emerging scholars whose work builds an international studies with and for young people. Contributions expose the ageist and often paternalistic power relations that shape our discipline and the institutions and places in which we research. Participants draw on research projects concerned with young people and migration, disasters, peacebuilding, transitional justice, militarisation and governance practices to think differently about the relationships and sites of knowledge we take seriously in international studies.

Exhibition Hall Open Room: Hyatt

Adjusting to inter-state competition: How middle powers are carving out a defence role for themselves (War Studies Working Group) Room: Soprano, Hyatt The War in Ukraine is symptomatic of an overarching trend that has emerged since the second decade of the twenty-first century: the return of state-based threats, the intensification of inter-state competition, the increasing sophistication of weapon systems, and the concomitant dawn of new warfighting domains. Whilst it is tempting to apply the analytical framework of great power competition, middle powers are equally adjusting to these new realities and their decisions are bound to exert influence on the international system. Following up on that, this panel aims to discuss some of the dilemmas and major strategic decisions that Western middle powers are facing when formulating their defence policies: their acquisition strategies and industrial defence policies, their role within the Western alliance, the modernisation of their armed forces, and their presence in outer space as a new battleground. These dimensions are analysed through multi-theoretical perspectives, including military innovation studies, strategic culture, middle power theory, and organisation theory.

CPD Early Career Prize (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Jane How, Symphony Hall CPD Early Career Prize

Cooperation and colonization. Future geopolitical relations in space. (Astropolitics Working Group) Room: Fortissimo, Hyatt Adam Nettles: Comparison of European trade colonies and modern corporate plans for outer space colonization This paper compares the strategies of modern corporations for outer space colonization and governance with historical examples of similar efforts in colonial ventures of the past. It does so with a focus on the institutional structure proposed by modern corporations for governing their interplanetary colonies. These are characterized by heavily idealistic and often libertarian ideals of self-government, often eschewing the authority of Earth-based states. These models will be compared with corporate colonies that that existed in various forms during Europe’s colonial period. This paper will analyze these cases from a neoinstituionalist lens and will offer useful insights as to what can be expected if these proposed corporate colonies do indeed become reality in coming years. Jana Fey The Politics of International Cooperation in Deep Space Exploration and Human Settlements: Geopolitical Realities and the Hope for Common Values International Space University, France With humans having ventured into space for over six decades, we have witnessed several phases of international cooperation in space science and exploration, much of which has been driven by space agencies and the national security objectives of their respective governments. As the space sector is growing rapidly, a more diverse set of stakeholders has emerged, including emerging space nations and the private sector. To achieve highly ambitious goals in deep space, such as sending humans to Mars, international cooperation is seen as an essential element of successful missions. However, the shifts and risks associated with geopolitical tensions on Earth raise important questions about the form future international cooperation will take and the logics informing collaborative endeavours. This project seeks to understand how international cooperation in deep space exploration and human settlements will evolve given a complex landscape of organizations and stakeholders. Drawing on an interdisciplinary body of literature, including International Relations, Space Policy, and STS, and a set of expert interviews, this project traces a genealogy of international cooperation in deep space exploration to make sense of the (geo)political dynamics underpinning contemporary and future collaboration in space. Dr Kehinde Abolarin and Dr Laura Cashman: Nigeria’s space collaborations through a postcolonial lens: How racialised hierarchies are reproduced in the space technology sector The international system is racialised. Hierarchies persist in terms of access to power, resources and opportunities. This has deep roots in the colonial experience. It is enacted in interpersonal relations and reinforced through political and social institutions. In this paper we argue that Nigeria’s space programme and in particular the agreements reached with international partners (Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, UK, and the China Great Wall Industry Corporation) reflect these racialised hierarchies and assumptions about Nigeria’s capacity to be an equal partner. In both cases, but in different ways, there were limits to the sharing of knowledge, data and training. This kept Nigeria dependent on external expertise and hindered the development of a fully autonomous space programme – a pattern we see reproduced in many postcolonial interactions. Dr Sarah Lieberman: Space Station and State Lines. The nation state is the core actor in studies of International Relations and security. Some hoped that globalisation would dent its primacy, but a resurge in populist politics and politicians in the 2000s and 2010s meant that territorially tied national statehood has increased, rather than decreased in importance. In outerspace we have no state lines. No state can claim sovereign right to celestial bodies, and the parameters set to designate ‘airspace’, do not apply to outerspace. Moreover, the prevalence of commercial actors in space reduces the role of the nation state in space further. Nonetheless, as we see the International Space Station reach the end of its natural life in orbit, we must again address the means by which nations and states seek representation in space. Using primary documentation, this paper will discuss state lines on board the international space station and its use as a tool of USA soft power. China already has Taikonauts onboard its Tiangong space station, and as other states seek to join the low earth orbit party, this paper asks, what will be the impact on geopolitics?

Describing Difference, Seeking Solidarity: Interpretations of Race and Relationality in Anticolonial Campaigns during Historical Decolonization (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Dolce, Hyatt During the period of mid-twentieth century decolonization, anticolonial activists and international representatives held a wide range of views on issues of relationality, power and (national) identity, and citizen-state relations, in which questions of race and ethnicity were often paramount, if at times unspoken. The ways in which race, ethnicity, and indigeneity were understood informed ways of belonging in a newly-independent state and within the international community. These perceptions, while shaped in part by the geopolitics of the Cold War, were often the result of longer patterns of knowledge production, including race science and nationalism, that emerged through uneven colonizer-colonised relations. This panel brings together four papers to explore how different ideas of race and ethnicity became key to anticolonial movements both within and across former colonies and before, during, and after the ‘moment’ of flag independence. Delving into the heterogeneity of ‘anticolonial movements’, the panel interrogates how different racial and ethnic frameworks led to both the inclusion and marginalisation of campaigners within transnational and international spaces. This panel thus draws attention to relations of difference within anticolonial movements, the influence of race and ethnicity on smaller anticolonial campaigns, and the consequences of this for newly-independent states and global governance.

Domestic politics, political leaders, and foreign policies (Foreign Policy Working Group) Room: Stuart Hall, The Exchange A set of papers on the influence on foreign policy of domestic politics, legislatures, and the personal political preferences of leaders.

Far-Right and Misogynist Extremism (Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group) Room: Drawing Room, Hyatt This panel brings together papers that examine right wing ideology and misogyny as extremism.

Gendered militaries and knowledges of war (Critical Military Studies Working Group) Room: Room 101, Library Building on feminist scholarship on women's work in war and conflict, the panel focuses on ‘female engagement’ and the role of women in the armed forces in the contexts of the United Nations, Ukrainian, US, British, and Israeli militaries. Exploring the ways in which gender has been constructed and deployed by militaries in situations of war and conflict such as US and UK Female Engagement Teams in Iraq and Afghanistan and their influence on contemporary UN Engagement Teams and Platoons; conscription in Israel; and as representative of commitment to Western liberal values in Ukraine; there remain complex and unequal dynamics regarding the experience of women within the armed forces. The panel seeks to explore, from different perspectives and across different historical cases, the ways in which women’s work has been made (in)visible in war, conflict, and counterinsurgency, how women are constructed as subjects of affective and embodied knowledge that is ‘useful’ in war, and the ways in which gender is integrated into changing military cultures.

Latin American IR in the UK (Orphan Papers track) Room: Boardroom, The Exchange IR scholarship in the UK has traditionally paid scant attention to Latin America, but an emerging literature from scholars located in UK academic centres has shown the richness that this region presents for IR theoretical and methodological elaboration. This roundtable focuses on recent contributions that UK-based IR scholars with a Latin American focus have made to the development of several subfields within IR. The participants will discuss their contributions to international political economy, security studies, foreign policy analysis, and international organisations, and how future research can build on Latin American insights, to advance this and other subfields. Participants will also reflect on periods of history that have remained unexplored, data that remains untapped, and new methodologies, theories, and agendas that helped bring Latin America to the forefront of IR.

Learning and Teaching Café (Learning and Teaching Working Group) Room: Exec 10, ICC Learning and Teaching Café

Local peace and hybridity in peacebuilding interventions (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Room 102, Library Papers examining agency, inequality and hierarchy in Peacebuilding interventions

Occultism in International Studies: A Research Agenda (Post-Structural Politics Working Group) Room: Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange International Relations (IR) as a field has for a long time been preoccupied with understanding the possibilities and pitfalls of modernity. Here, it has been approached in terms of the knowledge system that modernity both naturalised and denaturalised, the subjectivities it simultaneously created and silenced, and the politics it made both possible and impossible (Blaney and Tickner 2017, Paolini 1999, Ruggie 1993, Shilliam 2013, Walker 1993). However, despite its preoccupation with modernity’s contradictions, the role that the occult has played in constructing and reproducing these knowledge systems, subjectivities and politics has been largely left unquestioned. This Roundtable aims to open up space for an an interrogation of the occult in IR, ultimately interrogating what the occult is a critique of both historically and in the present. Occultism, meaning ‘hidden’ in Latin, is associated with ideas of the supernatural and magical beliefs and practices. Further, it is often thought of as the antithesis of rational modernity, associated with either pre-modern superstitious beliefs or tied to racialised and orientalised ideas of Eastern mysticism. However, ideas of the occult have been central to Western modernity since the onset of the Scientific Revolution, where it constituted the dialectics through which notions of science and knowledge were erected (Hanegraaff 1998). It further rose to political prominence in the late 19th century through its association with radical political agendas like socialism, feminism, and anti-colonial agitation (Owen 2004, Gandhi 2006). In a contemporary age of Instagram witches, the uptake of occultism in far-right political ideologies, and spiritual healing as an integral part of the global wellness industry, it is clear that occultism warrants our attention as IR scholars. This Roundtable aims to explore the politics of the occult and what it is a critique of in terms of knowledge systems, subjectivities, and the politics of modernity. It starts from the premise that the occult is constructed as the ‘other’ of modernity as either belonging to a ‘past’ (within the space of Europe) or belonging to spaces outside of ‘Europe’ that have not yet ‘caught up’ with modernity. As such, in general, the occult is seen as ‘before’ and something that disappears as modernity is established. Yet, we argue that there is a dialectic relationship between the occult and scientific modernity that reproduces them both rather than a linear relationship when one follows the other. The aim of the Roundtable then is to investigate what possibilities and limitations this dialectic relationship creates and interrogate what it means for the knowledge systems, subjectivities, and politics under scrutiny in understanding the international.

Pandemic Governance and the State – Local approaches at a time of emergency (Global Health Working Group) Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange The Coronavirus pandemic was a challenge for governance both on the global and on the local level. As the outbreak unfolded, each country had to find its own balance and priorities in translating international guidance and different approaches into a functioning regime on the ground. The resulting pandemic regimes took often similar but at times radically different shapes, depending on the locality. This panel brings together different studies of local approaches to the pandemic, emphasising important facets of governance in each case. Ranging from a detailed discussion of China’s distinct set of rules, to questions of the role of the state and the bioeconomy within this translational effort, the panel asks urgent questions that need to be investigated more closely in the wake of this crisis: how does the local context mediate between state-level priorities and the necessarily local demands of everyday life at a time of profound upheaval?

Policing, Prisons, and Counterinsurgency in the Global South (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Concerto, Hyatt This panel explores practices, systems and discourses of state coercion in and from the Global South and their impact on domestic and global (dis-)order. Policing, prisons and counterinsurgency feature prominently in (international) politics scholarship. But theory- and policy-minded works are, often intentionally, centred on Eurocentric views of order, state coercion as tools to intentionally *create* or unintentionally *endanger* order, and the “West” as the main actor in the global diffusion of ideas and practices in policing and counterinsurgency. Critical scholarship has illuminated how in the “West” policing and counterinsurgency forges political subjectivity, defines citizenship and marginality, and creates and preserves specific forms of social and political order. The papers in this panel build upon and seek to advance this promising research agenda beyond the “West”. Their focus on different country cases and methodologies provides scope for dialogue on several concerns that unite the papers: What role does the “South” play in *producing* knowledge on state coercion? How does order-making involve *disorder-making*? How do *abolitionist practices* produce alternative forms of order? Does state repression shape “subversive” actors’ *agency*? The panel aims to offer fresh empirically grounded perspectives for debates on the social and political impact of policing and counterinsurgency worldwide.

Political Economies of Europe and Europeanisation (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Room 103, Library A panel on the theme of political economies of Europe and Europeanisation

Questioning structures, practices, and discourses in International Relations: Readings from Mexico and the Global South (BISA) Room: Room 105, Library This panel critically reflects on structures, practices, and discourses in contemporary International Relations. It demonstrates, on the one hand, that theoretical-methodological production from Mexico engages in dialogue with international perspectives advocating for the consideration of history, situated learning, emotions, and interdisciplinary approaches as fundamental elements for the construction of meaningful and relevant knowledge. On the other hand, it acknowledges that scientific production cannot be detached from the diversity of concerns and needs within a community. Thus, the panel explores topics such as: a) the particularity of Mexican theoretical production in IR in Mexico and its paradoxical distance from hegemonic visions in the United States; b) the importance of thinking about IR from the perspective of Mesoamerica to promote knowledge creation in the Global South; c) the imagination of global spaces based on notions of intimacy and queer theory in IR; d) the challenges posed by the Global South to the traditional meanings of development; and e) the understanding of de-globalization and its implication for Mexico and the Global South.

Rituals in International Relations (Interpretivism in International Relations Working Group) Room: Exec 6, ICC Rituals are common in international politics: they shape, structure, co-constitute, reinforce or hollow out a wide range of international practices, ranging from diplomacy to deterrence. They are also gaining increasing traction in International Relations. Understanding the role rituals play in processes of meaning-making at the time of shifting international orders is more important than ever. Our panel aims to explore not only a range of different sites in which international rituals unfold but also interrogate whose rituals these are and for whom they are enacted. This panel brings together a wide range of approaches on rituals in international relations, ranging from a conceptual exploration of ritualistic enchantment to peacekeeping, martial rituals, nuclear deterrence and diplomatic practices. We aim to bring these approaches in conversation with each other to enhance our conceptual, theoretical and empirical understanding of rituals and their political work in international relations.

Securitisation of Migration and Asylum in Europe: Perceptions, Representation and Management (International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group) Room: Exec 1, ICC This panel explores the processes of migration management and ‘bordering practices’ at the European borders. It looks into the new employed technologies at the borders, the proliferation of the private visa application company, and the growing securitisation of migrants and refugees. Through documentary photography and media discourse analysis light is shed to the perception, representation and management of migration and asylum in the UK, Greece and Portugal.

The Big Picture as an approach to the study of International Relations: Thinking with and beyond Barry Buzan (International Relations as a Social Science Working Group) Room: Justham, Symphony Hall Barry Buzan has had an impressive career, spanning more than five decades. He has made numerous contributions to a wide-ranging list of subjects within the International Relations (IR) discipline, and has also been a vocal supporter of building bridges to cognate disciplines. This panel features draft versions of contributions to a book (under contract with CUP) honouring Buzan's work by critically examining his ubiquitous focus on the big picture. In almost all of his work, Buzan adopts an approach that zooms out to the grand and holistic vista. Buzan’s big picture approach does not seem to lay claim to grand theory or universalism of either scope or explanation. Moreover, Buzan’s approach does not appear to bind researchers to a specific epistemological or ontological outlook. The ‘big picture’ label captures Buzan’s interest in developing analytical frameworks that render big and hugely complex issues easily accessible. It necessarily includes the building of bridges between distinct subfields (for example, between IPE, IR, security studies, area studies, sociology and so on) as well as between different theoretical approaches (realism, constructivism, liberalism, etc.). But can it be replicated by others? Is it useful? And what are its limitations?

The politics of actually existing climate leadership (Environment Working Group) Room: Exec 9, ICC Since the Paris Agreement, national climate action has been emphasised as the driving force of decarbonisation. Despite a recent suite of climate legislation, including the Inflation Reduction Act and the European Green Deal, in 2023 more fossil fuels were consumed than any year in history. Global climate action is failing to bend the emissions curve. Nonetheless, a limited selection of states stand out as making claims to having reduced their emissions and possessing relatively ambitious climate targets. The papers in this panel will critically examine such claims to climate leadership in a world where climate governance is organised around reducing national emissions, rather than coordinating the systematic dismantling of the fossil fuel industry. How should we understand the significance of climate change politics in states making claims to climate leadership? Do they represent laboratories that can and should be emulated, or limited exceptions that prove the rule of climate policy failure? What kinds of social movements, policy programmes and interventions might represent true climate leadership? Developing responses to these questions, the papers in this panel will critically engage with the practices of actually existing climate ‘leaders’ and the potential for progressive and radical forms of climate leadership.

Whose security? The UK’s security strategies and narratives (European Security Working Group) Room: Dhani Prem, The Exchange In this panel, we invite reflection on the UK’s security strategies and narratives. The Integrated Review in 2021, and the ‘Refresh’ in 2023 have provided a framework for UK national security thinking. But, we can identify a tension within them, between their occasional embrace of a broader security terminology (noting, for instance, the need to tackle ‘the priority issues – health, security, economic well-being and the environment – that matter most to our citizens in their everyday lives’ (IR, 2021: 12), and the ‘conventional’ approach – focussing primarily on state security and the use of military force – on which they ultimately fall back. This invites discussion of the extent to which debates on ‘widening’ and ‘deepening’ security can contribute to rethinking security in policy and practice, and demands we ask: Whose security does UK national security privilege? What framings and understandings of security are foregrounded within UK national security? And how might other conceptualisations of security produce alternative visions for UK national security policy and practice?

“War on Terror” 2.0.? Critique, contestation and human rights (Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group) Room: Exec 5, ICC This roundtable discusses the prospects for critique, contestation and human rights in a potential new era of counterterrorism. Although some have declared the “War on Terror” to be over, its legacy is still felt at Guantanamo Bay, the indefinite detention camps in NE Syria, and in programmes such as the UK’s Prevent Strategy. In addition, the Israel-Gaza conflict and other events might even be heralding a “War on Terror 2.0.” What are the prospects for critiquing and contesting state violence and counterterrorism in the current context? Have states learned lessons from the abuses of the post 9/11 era? Can state violence be constrained and what does 20 years of research on the role of human rights in the ‘War on Terror’ tell us in response to this question? Participants will reflect on how "terrorism" has been (and is being) constructed; the rhetoric that is used to justify – and to contest – state violence; the normalisation of surveillance; the delegitimisation of dialogue; and the extent to which human rights norms and international legal commitments and institutions can constrain state violence or hold political actors to account. The roundtable thus brings expertise on Critical Terrorism Studies into conversation with research on human rights.

Lunchtime history talk from the War Studies Working Group - Birmingham: The War Years. Speakers: Brian Wright and Matt Felkin Room: Justham, Symphony Hall

Beyond the Giddensian subject in Ontological Security Studies: Rethinking the psychic life of world politics. (Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group) Room: Fortissimo, Hyatt The field of Ontological Security Studies (OSS) has seen a proliferation of innovative analytical frameworks exploring the relationship between emotions, identity, and international policies. Yet, the literature remains predominantly anchored in subject-centred approaches. Indeed, the scholarship residually echoes Giddens' influential conceptualisation of ontological (in)security as a sense of continuity and order, integral to the self and social identity emanating from a subject whose agency is geared towards seeking or avoiding it. This can be problematic because, by presupposing the subject, one can foreclose and repress emerging subjectivities, eventually imposing the means through which a stable self can be achieved. This panel explores alternative formulations and critical approaches to OSS that challenge the Giddensian idea of subject. It builds on emerging literature that has found inspiration in Deleuze, Lacan, and Melanie Klein to explore the psychic forces shaping world politics decentring approach to subjectivity. In doing so, this panel contributes to a more pluralistic approach to IR, thereby shedding light on the psycho-emotional dynamics shaping the international system.

China at the crossroads: Approaches to regional and domestic bargaining powers (International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group) Room: Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange The panel presents a comprehensive discussion on Chinese policy-making concerning its regional and internal mechanisms in bargaining power. Do the Chinese strategies transform into new and alternative power instruments to re-consolidate power? The papers delve into geopolitical and domestic calculations of the Chinese states in response to the posed question.

Communities, Conflict Preparedness and Agency in Unarmed Civilian Protection: Projects from Cameroon, Nigeria, Palestine, and South Sudan (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Dolce, Hyatt This panel draws together four parallel research projects from the AHRC-funded ‘Creating Safer Space’ network. We discuss unarmed civilian protection (UCP) practices and self-protection efforts of conflict-affected communities, civilian-to-civilian protection techniques, and how grassroots UCP activities challenge or bypass top-down approaches. Complementing the innovations in existing UCP practices that often feature international interventions, our projects consider alternatives that foreground local perceptions and priorities using culturally-specific, non-textual and artistic data gathering processes. We examine how UCP can be promoted and harnessed in a variety of challenging contexts, and how experience and knowledge can be translated and operationalised across different arenas. Our projects share an emphasis on self-protection, culturally-specific tools and local agency to examine how local-level UCP is implemented, understood, shared, and built on.

Disability and Illness in International Studies: Practising a Feminist Ethic of Care (Gendering International Relations Working Group) Room: Soprano, Hyatt The early days of the Covid-19 pandemic in some ways foregrounded issues of illness and disability in international relations and in the academy, raising questions around what we owe to the disabled and clinically vulnerable; equity and coloniality in the distribution of risk and care(giving); how to balance conflicting access needs; the use of the carceral state to enforce public health measures; and the propensity of racial capitalism to disable and kill in the pursuit of profit – including in the neoliberal university. However, the urgency with which these questions gained prominence has been matched by an equally insistent push to get ‘back to normal’. Acts of solidarity with disabled and chronically ill people gave way to the eugenic logic that ‘the vulnerable will fall by the wayside’; accommodations for which disabled people had fought for many years once again became ‘unreasonable’ once lockdowns ended and abled people no longer needed them; and questions of disability and illness are once again marginalised when considering how we research and teach and international studies. This roundtable will explore how disability and illness shape the discipline of International Relations: in the classroom, in our research, in our disciplinary spaces and our wider engagements with global politics. Centring the experiences of disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent scholars, we will ask how we can practice a feminist ethic of care that has disability justice at its heart.

Emerging powers and economies (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Justham, Symphony Hall A panel on the theme of emerging powers and economies in/and IPE

Everyday Security: The Production of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Discourse and Praxis within Ordinary Spaces (Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group) Room: Jane How, Symphony Hall Research on everyday, vernacular, and ontological security is burgeoning in International Relations, including in studies of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism. However, these literatures have at times reduced the agency of publics, positioned as vectors through which security happens. This panel is one of two connected panels which brings together critical scholarship that is reimagining the way that Security becomes produced, re-produced and co-produced, through everyday interactions and relations. It moves beyond the traditional state-centric understandings of Security. The papers within this panel showcase how networks of formal and informal actors, and the negotiations which occur across and between them, enable us to reveal how terrorism and counter-terrorism become conceptualised, and (in)security therefore produced, within the discourse and praxis of ordinary spaces. In bringing together these empirically rich studies, at the forefront of reshaping how the production of (in)Security is viewed, we reveal how everyday practices and interactions are at the heart of the possibility of transforming politics from the ground up.

Knowledge production before and after the Troubles (War Studies Working Group) Room: Room 101, Library The 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and the ongoing ramifications of Brexit have led to a re-examining of the legacies of the Troubles and of contemporary cross-border and European geopolitical narratives. What is less known is how these complex and nuanced narratives interact over time and across political divides. This panel seeks to explore how the production of knowledge during and since the Troubles is influencing everyday contemporary politics in Northern Ireland. It brings together scholars whose work explores the effects of Brexit on cross-border political relations; the role of the Northern Ireland Office in the peace process; the IRA’s role in Republican strategy from 1969 to 2005; the changing role of Anglo-Irish networks in the run up to the peace process; and, memorialisation and criticality in the context of British servicewomen’s labour during the Troubles. In bringing into dialogue this scholarship, the panel will open up space to identify interactions in the construction of contemporary narratives that will forge new insights into the legacies of the Troubles.

Macro-micro dynamics in peacekeeping research (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Concerto, Hyatt The field of peacekeeping research (and practice) has witnessed many ‘turns’ in the last decades. In the early 2000s, the critical of liberal peacekeeping led to a ‘local turn’ in which scholars have been focusing on the subnational and local levels, studying local-international interactions, observing the everyday dimension of peacekeeping missions and approaching peacekeeping through a micro and bottom-up perspective. In parallel, we also observe a ‘macro turn’ in peacekeeping research in which scholars analyze the effect of macro-level factors such as world politics, international norms and geopolitics on UN peace operations. These two trends in peacekeeping research have mainly evolved in parallel without engaging with each other. In this panel, we propose to start a conversation on macro-micro dynamics in order to move research on peacekeeping further. Papers in this panel address this question by looking at the relationship between micro-level processes and macro dynamics in peacekeeping legitimation and in the effect of world politics on UN peacekeeping. Other papers adopt a meso approach. By doing so, it contributes to peacekeeping research by fostering dialogue between different theoretical and methodological perspectives.

Martial Realism and the Problem of War (Post-Structural Politics Working Group) Room: Drawing Room, Hyatt The field of critical military and security studies remains beset by the ontological problem of war (Barkawi & Brighton 2011, Aradau 2012). Recent work has emphasised the inexorable relationship between war and peace, suggesting the ‘always already militarised’ nature of liberal society (Cowen 2012, Howell 2018) and the need to ‘follow the trail of war wherever it leads us’ (Bousquet, Grove, Shah 2020). While it is necessary to reveal and critique the ‘martial politics’ underwriting the liberal conceit of a ‘purely civilian’ non-militarised sphere, there is a risk that war thereby assumes an undue ontological coherence. As Furtado (2023), suggests, ‘ontological militarism’ attributes a ‘heuristic privilege to war, turning it into the cypher of all social relations by investment in an assumed indistinction between war/peace and war/struggle.’ Indeed, in recent years popular political reporting has stressed that the line between war and peace has rapidly and radically blurred with the apparent advent of novel forms of ‘hybrid warfare’. While these claims obscure the historical wax and wane of civil-military relations, they also present ‘martial politics’ not as a lens for critique, but as call to accept an ontological privileging of war. This paper session therefore seeks to consider and critique what might be called ‘martial realism’ and its effects on contemporary international politics. Aradau, C. (2012). Security, War, Violence – The Politics of Critique: A Reply to Barkawi. Millennium, 41(1), 112–123. Barkawi, T., & Brighton, S. (2011). Powers of War: Fighting, Knowledge, and Critique1. International Political Sociology, 5(2), 126–143. Bousquet, A., Grove, J., & Shah, N. (2020). Becoming war: Towards a martial empiricism. Security Dialogue, 51(2–3), 99–118. Cowen D. ed. (2012) Militarism? A MiniForum. Furtado, H. T. (2023). Critique of Ontological Militarism. International Political Sociology, 17(3) Howell, A. (2018). Forget “militarization”: Race, disability and the “martial politics” of the police and of the university. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 20(2), 117-136

Policing minoritised groups in the global ‘South’ and ‘North’: New perspectives on vulnerabilities revolving around migration, religion, and race (International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group) Room: Boardroom, The Exchange The policing of minoritised communities has recently attracted increased attention in academic and policy circles as well as amongst advocates for refugees rights, civic rights, antiracism and freedom of religion and belief. In the UK, there is now substantial scholarship on the policing of minorities and the racialised securitised experiences of racial, ethnic and religious minorities, including notably Muslims. However, there is little comparative research on the policing of groups that are minoritised based on religion, race, ethnicity or refugee status in the global ‘North’ and ‘South’. Encouraging comparative, decolonial, and intersectional approaches, this roundtable examines the following questions: What does the existing scholarship tell us about how religiously, racially, and ethnically minoritised groups experience policing in diverse contexts? What are emerging issues and under-researched aspects? How do experiences with policing authorities change following migration? How does citizenship status (or lack thereof) exacerbate existing vulnerabilities of marginalised groups across cultural and political contexts? How can evidence on these questions be co-produced with members of minoritised groups in fair, equitable, collaborative and participatory ways that challenge conventional methods of knowledge production? The roundtable brings together researchers and practitioners who have worked on these questions in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America.

Popular Culture and World Politics – reflection and mirroring an ever-changing world (Orphan Papers track) Room: Room 102, Library Popular Culture matters! Such a slogan can appear over dramatic yet where popular culture really comes into its own is as a resource to help capture and understand the rapid changes in world politics. Popular culture producers, whether they be film makers, fashion designers, tv producers, videogame makers or authors of picture books internalise, contribute to, and reflect world events. Yet their works also contribute to and capture the popular imaginary at times of change. We can, of course, overstate the pace of change – much that appears to be change is in fact stasis when seen over time. This panel actively explores the content of popular culture contributing to methods and knowledge about trends and developments within world politics. Themes of banishment and exclusion, capitalist critique, conspiracy theories, visual security, and gender are all identified, problematised and reflected on through deep readings of artefacts both old and new.

Power, Norms and the Legitimacy of the International Order (International Law and Politics Working Group) Room: Exec 1, ICC Power, Norms and the Legitimacy of the International Order

Security and political experiments in the West African Sahel. (Africa and International Studies Working Group) Room: Stuart Hall, The Exchange The Sahel region in West Africa has been the theatre of a complex security crisis for over a decade, involving armed groups linked to Al-Qaida and the Islamic State, self-defence groups and militias, national security forces, and international/multinational interventions. Amidst this crisis, the region has recently experienced a series of political reconfigurations, including multiple coups and a return to military regimes. This panel will explore recent developments across the region in the fields of governance and security, highlighting different experiments and their impact from different parts of the Sahel.

The Global South, Latin America, and international affairs (Foreign Policy Working Group) Room: Room 103, Library A collection of papers focusing especially on foreign affairs of countries of Latin America.

The Making and Unmaking of Global Orders (Interpretivism in International Relations Working Group) Room: Room 105, Library This panel explores the making and unmaking of global orders in various sites and through various approaches.

The Ukraine War and the Re-making of Europe's Security Order (European Security Working Group) Room: Exec 9, ICC The Russian invasion of Ukraine is widely viewed as an era-changing event, likely to shape Europe for years, perhaps decades, to come. Yet, how exactly has the war re-shaped Europe and what remains contingent on the still highly uncertain outcome of the Ukraine war? This round-table will use the concept of a European regional security order to address these questions, exploring what different elements of the European security order looked like before 24th February 2022, developments since then and future scenarios. Contributions to the round-table will address: NATO's evolution, Russia's place in Europe's security order, the EU's response to the Ukraine war, EU-NATO relations and transatlantic relations in the context of the Ukraine war. The round-table will draw on contributions to a forthcoming special issue of the journal Defence Studies.

The nexus of artificial intelligence and critical security studies: Current issues and future research trajectories (International Studies and Emerging Technologies Working Group) Room: Exec 10, ICC The realm of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is known for its dynamic and rapidly evolving nature. International Relations (IR) scholars are actively investigating the diverse impacts of AI on national security, emphasizing crucial factors such as strategic advantage, strategic stability, nuclear deterrence, and the acceleration of technological progress. This roundtable brings together a diverse expertise on critical security implications of AI and explores its various social, economic, ethical, and gender-related aspects. The main aim is to foster a theoretically informed discussion of current trends and future research trajectories and to offer a comprehensive exploration of power dynamics, identity, and insecurities associated with AI.

The political economy of the Sino-British Joint Declaration - 40 years on (British International History Working Group) Room: Dhani Prem, The Exchange 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in December 1984 which agreed the return of Hong Kong to China with effect from 1 July 1997. This panel re-examines the international political and economic dimensions of the Joint Declaration in the light of recently released archives and memoirs. The panel has three main objectives. Firstly, to analyse the 1984 Agreement itself and in particular chart the foreign policy strategies of the British and Chinese sides. Secondly, to assess which theories have the greatest explanatory power in understanding the foreign policy approaches of both governments (including primacy of domestic politics, foreign policy analysis, historical statecraft). Thirdly, to chart the broader significance of the Joint Declaration in respect of the EU and the way in which historical agreements are instrumentalised as a resource for policy makers.

The uses and abuses of history, memory and identity in Russian foreign and security policies. (Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group) Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange History and memory are core identity markers. They tell a story of how a country and the individual within it were formed, why they have and uphold particular values and shape the future trajectory of a nation. This story is often rewritten and repurposed to follow a particular narrative, which is deemed desirable by those involved in order to gain support for a cause, mobilise society, ignite particular feelings of nostalgia and foster patriotism within the country.. The Russian state’s story of its past is highly guarded, with any challenge of those narratives deemed a purposeful distortion of the past aimed to destroy Russia and its identity. This panel focuses on the increasing use and abuse of history in Russia’s political, media and educational landscape, ranging from the militarisation of youth and the use of the Orthodox Church, the deidentification of deported Ukrainian children; to civilizational and historical tropes in its relationship with China, and the use of memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis to teach history in schools, and the implications for Russian foreign policy..

Uncovering Hierarchies of International Relations: Some Perspectives from India (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Exec 6, ICC The understanding of International Relations (IR) in the present-day world stands challenged for its ‘Eurocentric’ bias. There are emerging voices for replacing understanding/s and praxis associated with ‘Western IR’ by democratic alternatives. These voices raised from several platforms that critical of the dominant/mainstream/conventional understanding have raised demands for ‘global IR’, ‘pluriversal understanding of spaces, issues and problems’, planetray approach to IR to name some. The proposed panel titled Uncovering Hierarchies of International Relations: Some Perspectives from India attempts to explore some of the important dimensions that form important categories of concerns, dialogue and research of these critical voices raised from a post-colonial context. These voices reflecting important perspectives of scholars working in India hold the potential of enriching the debate and contributing meaningfully towards further research that can broaden the horizons explored by the discipline of IR, its associated understandings, policy and practice. The papers are multi-disciplinary in nature and cover significant grounds. The diversity of disciplinary lens and methodologies offers to unveil the entrenched hierarchies compressed within its folds, question the workings of power-relations, unmute the silences in IR and invest it with more democratic, pluriversal and content relevant to the world we live in. The proposed panel comprises of five papers exploring and interrogating different aspects of hierarchical power-relations reflected in the present-day IR.

‘Regions’ and Spatial Relations to International Thought (Gendering International Relations Working Group) Room: Exec 5, ICC This panel brings together scholarship interrogating regional spaces and their historical and structural impacts to generating shared women’s political consciousness and practices. While important scholarly contributions have been made in mapping how global or transnational settings shape women’s international thought, we are yet to fully interrogate the role of ‘regions’ as ideational constructs, liminal and in-between spaces, and institutional structures that mediate and bridge the ‘local’ with the ‘global’. However, political ideas of Asian women bear the imprint of regional and trans-regional exchanges which distinctly show variations in the influence of North-South and South-South collaborations across different historical junctures. The contributions from this panel will explore how Asian women’s ideas potentially disrupt and complicate Whiteness and Eurocentric accounts of what constitutes as regional order-building projects. In so doing, it seeks to interrogate the myriad gendered spatial underpinnings to women’s international thought and the role of ‘regions’ for feminist politics in the past, present and future.

Controversies, Failed Scandals, and Contestation in the fields of Security and Counterterrorism (Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group) Room: Fortissimo, Hyatt This panel brings together scholarship on the ‘politics of exposure,’ scandal, contestation, and the role of public opinion in the fields of security and counterterrorism. It explores how social groups set the boundaries of what is violence and terrorism; how information on human rights violations may be “exposed” or suppressed; how controversies come about as a collective process; which actors can voice their narratives and which actors remain subaltern in public contestation; and which practices are socially legitimised and how. Charlotte Heath Kelly’s paper examines the failure to scandalise a harmful UK counterterrorism programme; Frank Foley analyses how ‘reverse shaming’ was used to suppress public contestation of torture in Spain; Lisa Stampnitzky assesses the interplay of denial and acknowledgement in US government discourse on torture; Laura Fernández examines the social organization of contestation in Spain regarding the meaning and limits of ‘acceptable’ violence; and Michael Lister analyses how security professionals help to shape the politics of public opinion around security issues. By comparing failed scandals and suppression with active contestation, the panel will shed light on the mechanisms through which security controversies may be constructed or curtailed.

Decolonialising peacebuilding and everyday peace (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Dolce, Hyatt Papers look at aspects of everyday peace, Peacebuilding theory, and decolonialising peace

EU-China relation in a changing global context (an Italian perspective) (BISA) Room: Exec 9, ICC Over the past ten years, China has been advocating alternative concepts of global governance, emphasizing a shift where various powers play leading roles and the dominance of the US-led West is diminished. Given recent developments, including the conflict in Ukraine and escalating global power rivalries, notably between Washington and Beijing, it becomes imperative to examine the China’s evolving role on the world stage. In this context, the panel seeks to engage in the broader discourse on how the EU and its member states have reacted to an increasingly vocal Chinese call to transform global governance, promoting principles such as non interference and respect of sovereignty. Consequently, the objective is to scrutinize and discuss China's expanding influence in diverse regional contexts and evaluate the dynamics of its interactions with the EU and its members states. The panel is composed by Italian scholars who are members of the Italian Standing Group on International Relations (SGRI) and seek to provide a specific Italian and European perspective on these issues.

Everyday Peace and Lingering Violence (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange This panel examines persistent and emerging challenges of everyday peace in so-called post-war environments with lingering violence. While it examines the challenges of peace in contexts with violence and legacies of violence that are unresolved, for instance enforced disappearances, continuums of gender-based violence, and population displacement, the presenters also reflect on the strategies and know-how that communities and social organizations are using to overcome obstacles. The panel examines visibility and invisibility, and how certain issue areas and groups of people may become more or less prominent over time in transitional justice and peacebuilding. The panel reflects on advances and challenges in the everyday peacebuilding agenda. It includes discussion and reflection from varying empirical case studies. It also brings in insight from other research streams, e.g. feminist peace research, trans-scalar analysis, and work on agency. The panel considers the passage of time in relation to everyday peace. It examines important dimensions of everyday peace, ranging from non-violence to memory and reconciliation.

Non-State Actors and Civil Wars (War Studies Working Group) Room: Room 105, Library Non-State Actors and Civil Wars

Ontologies and practices of global security (European Journal of International Security) Room: Room 101, Library Ontologies and practices of global security

Public feelings: the politics of affective circulation (Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group) Room: Room 102, Library Public feelings: the politics of affective circulation

Re-visiting the Turkish politics: domestic, regional and global challanges to Ankara (International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group) Room: Boardroom, The Exchange The panel proposes an interdisciplinary approach to Turkish politics in three levels of analysis: domestic, regional and international.

Recentring Harm in Critical Military Studies (Critical Military Studies Working Group) Room: Drawing Room, Hyatt This roundtable draws together scholars who are keen to examine ways to understand, critique, and confront the harms caused by military institutions, their personnel, and practices. At the centre of our research agendas are concerns about the visibility and invisibility of the different forms of harm generated by military power, and the state’s ability to produce particular forms of knowledge about what does and does not count as ‘harmful’. By reflecting on the concept of social harm - a tool used by some critical criminologists to draw the wider social and political contexts in and through which harms occur into focus – we explore how this alternative mode of inquiry might permit deeper and wider understandings of the everyday production and experience of harmful military activity. Our aim is to consider the implications of a military social harm approach for mechanisms of accountability and the generation of public debate on the costs of retaining and deploying military power.

Roundtable: Western approaches to security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific (War Studies Working Group) Room: Exec 1, ICC **Problematisation of Western approaches to security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific** The challenges that the emergence of competition between the United States and China will pose on a global level will be significant for the evolution of the international system in the coming decades. This evolution will particularly affect the Western world, whose geo-economic weight will see an important balancing act due to the emergence of new global players. Starting with conceptualisation one the Indo-Pacific as the new geopolitical scenario where much of the competition between the US and China will be concentrated, the West has responded by proposing its aspirations for this region. The numerous strategies and policy documents that are entirely dedicated to the Indo-Pacific, or deal with parts of it, focus heavily on the one-sided relationship between the promoting states and regional partners, united by values or interests. However, the growing Western frustration with many Indo-Pacific actors refusing to adapt to the US-China field choice, sees some Western actors embarking on a new phase of adaptation to this process. The creation of the AUKUS, on the strategic-military side, constitutes a first step towards the definition of new medium- to long-term balances that are truly capable of confronting Chinese expansionism. Since the launch of the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) in 2022, the framework has been touted by the Biden administration as “writing new rules for the 21st century”, with the aim of making the economies of the participant countries “grow faster and fairer” (cite). IPEF membership currently represents 40% of the world’s GDP. The framework has been described by some analyses as a response to the criticism faced by the Obama era ‘Pivot to Asia’ policy where the policy largely focused on defence matters. The region is home to many Southeast Asian (ASEAN) countries who all have varied historical relations with China and the US, as well as varied levels of domestic economic development and political stability. At the heart of this new phase lies the ability of Western actors, who recognise themselves in the international rule of law regime, to cooperate together in the region. At the academic level, the study of cooperation, its characteristics as well as its limits, in cooperation between Western actors is still at an early stage. Especially in those areas, economic-infrastructural cooperation, maritime security, and the relationship with multilateral entities such as ASEAN that are constituent features of the Indo-Pacific. The case of the United Kingdom and the European Union, medium-sized actors with strong ambitions of presence and influence in the region, is of particular interest. Indeed, it makes it possible to study the concept of cooperation applied to this region by declining it within the innovative framework of the study of medium-sized powers and their role in the international system. At the same time, the peculiarity of the post-Brexit relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union, between a medium power and a supranational organisation, opens the research scenario to new dimensions of understanding an international system increasingly characterised by mini-lateral initiatives, at a time of unprecedented multipolarity. **Proposed panel – questions, expertise, aim** This panel aims to discuss various developments, perceptions and responses in the Indo-Pacific region around the main question: what are the characteristics of UK-EU cooperation in the Indo-Pacific? What are the perceptions of regional, and external actors of this cooperation? What are the tangible results, and the limits of this cooperation? Panel members will each contribute from various country and sub-regional perspectives, followed by a discussion on the implications on the future of the region’s economic and political stability. **Composition and function** Chair - Professor Christophe Jaffrelot, Professor of Politics and Sociology, King’s India Institute, King’s College London; Lead of the Indo-Pacific research group. Panellist – Dr Zeno Leoni, Lecturer in Defence Studies, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London; Lead of the KCL Middle Powers research group. Panellist – Mauro Bonavita, Ph.D. candidate in International Relations, Department of War Studies, King’s College London; researcher KCL Indo-Pacific research group. Panellist – Cristina De Esperanza Picardo, Ph.D. candidate in International Relations, Department of European and International Studies, King’s College London and National University of Singapore; Researcher KCL Indo-Pacific Research group. Panellist – Anna Tan, Ph.D. candidate in International Relations, Defence Studies Department; Researcher KCL Indo-Pacific research group.

The 'knowers' of international studies: Radical intersectionality and collective imagining from the margins (Gendering International Relations Working Group) Room: Concerto, Hyatt Cynthia Enloe reminds us that “no individual or social group finds themselves on the ‘margins’ of any web of relationships…without some other individual or group having accumulated enough power to create the ‘centre’ somewhere else” (2004). International Relations is no different: there are central approaches with significant disciplinary power and marginalised approaches that get disregarded. There are, however, approaches and attention to spaces and people made marginal by dominant IR that have flourished despite (or because) of this disregard. Many of the empirical, theoretical, conceptual, and methodological questions asked in these incredibly rich but often marginalised approaches are not just academic, but existential for those who are made marginal, devalued, dismissed, excluded. Too often identities and people who are ‘marginal’ are also siloed, to be dealt with and disciplined in isolation. Queer theorist Cathy Cohen encourages us to perpetually interrogate all relations to power and to encourages us to ceaselessly reflect on the boundary-making and hierarchy-generating work our scholarship does precisely because it has political effects. As a discipline, IR for a long time studied a period — and still studies institutions founded in this period — dominated by a narrative of “never again”. One might say there was an implicit hopeful politics at play, particularly in peace research. Taking aim as disciplinary hierarchies but moving forward with an explicit hopefulness, this panel refuses practices of division and isolation and instead asks what might IR be from the margins? Reframing this engagement as a radical intersectionality, this roundtable brings together scholars working with communities and issues rendered marginalised by disciplinary norms. We invite participants to be unruly and undisciplined in their contributions to a conversation about power and ‘who gets to know’ in the discipline, that directly addresses the BISA theme of ‘whose international studies?’. The panel brings together scholars working at intersections of gender, youth, decolonial, queer, disability, migrant rights and issues to discuss how we can nurture solidarity in resistance to the competition that disciplinary norms foster, and collectively imagine beyond silos what an inclusive future of IR might look like.

The Injustices of Law (International Law and Politics Working Group) Room: Exec 6, ICC The Injustices of Law

The political economy of banking and banks (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Exec 5, ICC A panel on the political economy of banking and banks

Theorizing the International in International Organizations and Prototype INGOs: 1915 to 1950 (British International History Working Group) Room: Exec 10, ICC This panel brings together scholars interested in exploring ideas of the international operating within international institutions and private international organizations (or prototype INGOs) in the period 1915-1950. There is a recent and growing literature on plural and diverse forms of internationalism in the first half of the 20th century to which this panel will contribute. These papers examine the agency of a group of international actors not typically thought of as theorists of the international, but our panellists investigate concepts of the international within their organizational activity. The panel considers the concept in a variety of contexts looking at the United Nations, UNESCO, the World Trade Union Congress, the International Federation of University Women, and the Summer Schools of the League of Nations Union and Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

Unorthodox intersections: Migration Conversations from Diverse Perspectives (International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group) Room: Dhani Prem, The Exchange This panel brings a methodologically diverse set of papers together to ask who does, and does not, count in the production and realization of global north migration policies.  The papers seek out cross-disciplinary partnerships within and beyond Higher Education to forge unorthodox research partnerships to curate new interventions in the representation of migration at the global, national and local level of politics.  The articles travel the breadth of supranational policy negotiations (EU), national parliamentary debates (UK), and the interventions of local authorities (Birmingham, UK) to analyze the underlying power relations that inform policy decisions at both the global and the everyday unfolding of migration.  The papers draw on discussions of racial capitalism, global austerity, and necropolitics to articulate anew the lack of care and recognition provided to bodies that travel.  In their own particular way each paper makes a representation that challenges the status quo of “us/them”, “insider/outsider”, the powerful and the disenfranchised.  Situating these articles in conversation with each another is a deliberate provocation.  The papers challenge traditional forms of knowledge production and showcase the potential of research imagined and realized beyond the academy.

Whose Queer Political Economy? Conversations Within and Beyond IPE (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Sonata, Hyatt Sexuality—broadly defined to include sexual practices, behaviors, desires, and identities—remains a key site of political struggle around the world. While mainstream (and some critical) IPE has tended to overlook the importance of sexuality, there is a rich tradition of feminist and queer scholarship that locates sexual subjectivities, labor, and oppression firmly within the boundaries of the global capitalist economy. Our aim in this roundtable is to contribute to wider efforts to foster connections between scholars working on queer theory within IPE as well as to create connections with scholars outside of the field who are also interested in queer political economy questions. In so doing, we reflect on the potential of queer IPE not only to interrogate the sexual politics of neoliberalism but also to examine how the legacies of slavery and colonialism continue to shape global terrains of sexual struggle and injustice.

Whose Reflexivity? Different Interpretive Approaches for Researchers in Global Politics (Interpretivism in International Relations Working Group) Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange This panel explores different interpretive and reflexive approaches and positionalities of researchers in global politics.

Whose Security? Critical Reflections on Security Policy In the UK (European Security Working Group) Room: Stuart Hall, The Exchange This roundtable critically engages with security policy and practice in the UK. Following the Integrated Review in 2021, and the ‘Refresh’ in 2023, the roundtable will reflect on which ‘security’ issues are being prioritised by the UK, which are being deprioritised, and whose security is – and whose security is not – represented in the current security framework. The roundtable brings together speakers from a range of professional backgrounds, including policymaking, the third sector and academia, with a view to establishing a critical yet policy-engaged dialogue on the limits and possibilities of UK national security policy and practice.

British Ontological Insecurities and Anxieties in International Politics (Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group) Room: Sonata, Hyatt How do British ontological insecurities and anxieties shape and influence the dynamics of international politics at micro, meso, and macro levels? To address this complex query, this panel convenes an assortment of theoretical perspectives concerning ontological (in)security and anxiety. Drawing from a rich tapestry of sociological and psychoanalytic thought, the panel integrates the insights of prominent scholars such as Anthony Giddens, Jacques Lacan, and Melanie Klein. By employing these diverse theoretical lenses, the panel endeavours to examine an array of case studies centred around the United Kingdom. These case studies range from an exploration of state bordering practices to the state’s weaponisation of domestic violence to an analysis of the vicarious identification with both individuals and objects, as well as an examination of the intricacies of international cooperation. This comprehensive panel serves as a testament to the pervasive nature of anxiety within the contemporary British political landscape, shedding light on the multifaceted implications that manifest across various actors and levels of analysis. By fostering an inclusive dialogue and collaborative engagement with diverse theoretical perspectives, this panel seeks to deepen our understanding of the intricate interplay between British ontological (in)security and the intricate dynamics of international politics.

Climate geopolitics: Conflict, security, and responsibility (Environment Working Group) Room: Boardroom, The Exchange Climate geopolitics: Conflict, security, and responsibility

Data Governance and Digital Health – Visualisation, Inclusion, and Sovereignty in a Digital Health Economy (Global Health Working Group) Room: Soprano, Hyatt The turn to digital health and an ever-growing expansion of health data programmes are presenting huge potential for effective health governance. This potential, however, does not come without its own challenges. Contributions on this panel point out that a range of pressing questions emerge as health technologies are becoming increasingly central to the governance of different health issues. From the visualisation of pandemic data to the question of data sovereignty, the panel investigates the underlying rationales and exclusions built into current approaches. Instances of marginalisation are brought into focus, and discussions also turn to tensions with adjacent regulatory regimes in a growing bioeconomy. At the intersection of several burgeoning fields of technological and entrepreneurial development, health data often serves more than one purpose – and governance needs to strike a balance that still promotes health while not impeding the advance of new technologies.

Forced migration, asylum, and citizenship from the UK to the Global South (International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group) Room: Fortissimo, Hyatt This panel brings together papers on forced migration, labour and citizenship issues in the UK. It explores the figure of the migrant and the worker, it analyses forced migration of Kurds, transnational consequences of national policies based on the experience of Kuwaiti women, and the role the role of diasporic organisations (focussing on the Romanian community) on human trafficking and exploitation in the UK.

In Whom We Trust? Trustworthiness, Trust and Trusting within Bilateral and Multilateral Diplomacy (Orphan Papers track) Room: Concerto, Hyatt In an era of increasing distrust within bilateral and multilateral negotiations, the importance of trustworthiness, trust and trusting in diplomacy could not be more crucial for academics and practitioners. First, this panel places the focus of diplomacy back on individuals (whether state leaders, officials, diplomats or private citizens) as well as their perceptions, personal interactions, and practices - to and for whom - international studies exists. To do so, the papers in this panel will conceptually and theoretically examine trustworthiness, trust and trusting within various bilateral and multilateral diplomatic contexts from institutions like the UN and ASEAN through to US-USSR/Russian relations and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Through the papers in this panel, a valuable discussion of the subtle nuances of these related concepts and their impact on how diplomacy is done, with whom, and fundamentally whether it matters - from diplomats involved in everyday diplomacy to state leaders dealing with a potential nuclear confrontation - can be had. Finally, this panel contains scholars from across different career stages and institutes, drawing on different methodologies and case studies, yet with a shared interest in better understanding the relevance of trustworthiness, trust and trusting, within international studies.

Keynote by Prof Tarak Barkawi: 'War and World Politics: or why I stopped doing IR' SPONSORED BY THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY

• Chair: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)

Room: Jane How/Justham, Symphony Hall

Narratives, noise and normality in the global nuclear order (Global Nuclear Order Working Group) Room: Room 102, Library Within the global nuclear order, nuclear-armed states frequently utilise narratives that promulgate norms of strategic stability, nuclear responsibility, risk reduction and deterrence, thereby ‘normalising’ the continued possession of nuclear weapons. This panel brings together papers that highlight and analyse these narratives and the ‘noise’ at play within the global nuclear order. Drawing upon and showcasing a variety of innovative conceptual and analytical approaches, papers not only shine light on the communicative practices of the nuclear-armed, but explicitly emphasise the counter-narratives and contestation that surrounds both the norms and ‘normality’ of nuclear weapon possession and renunciation.

Nationalism, resistance, and dissent in political systems (Review of International Studies) Room: Drawing Room, Hyatt Nationalism, resistance, and dissent in political systems

New approaches to understanding data and methodology in peace and conflict (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Room 101, Library Papers explore humour, social media, arts based methods, and participatory approaches

Peacebuilding as Violence? Engaging with a complex relationship (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Dolce, Hyatt The crisis of peacebuilding in all its forms and manifestations is widely acknowledged. We have witnessed the challenges to and failed outcomes of negotiations with conflict parties, efforts to democratize and stabilize conflict-ridden societies, or robust military interventions in different global arenas and contexts. In literature and practice, violence and peacebuilding are assumed to be opposing phenomena; it is the violence of conflict actors which hinders peacebuilding, and that peacebuilders try to minimize. The panel offers a different approach to the relationship between peacebuilding and violence, in not asking how violence obstructs peacebuilding, but how peacebuilding is fostering, enabling, creating, or legitimizing very different forms of violence and insecurity. Peacebuilding, despite benevolent mandates and normative obligations to peace, is therefore not separable from violence, but can co-constitute violence. The presentations engage with the multiple forms of this constitutive relationship, in focusing on perceptions of gendered (in)security and violence of citizens in the everyday, the ways peacebuilding has supported violent security institutions, or how peacebuilding has been directly violent in its own right. The goal is not to dismiss peacebuilding per se, but to understand the underlying reasons for the ongoing crisis and reflect upon alternatives.

Political economy of the environment (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Room 103, Library A panel on the theme of the political economy of the environment

Projecting Power and Science: Anti-Satellite Weapons and Strategic Interests in Space (Astropolitics Working Group) Room: Room 105, Library This panel brings together new research focusing on the military, security, and geopolitical dimensions of space weapons, satellite programmes, and space science itself. Papers focus on Russia, China, the United States, and Indonesia, and how in each case practical military, economic, and security interests drive forward major space programmes with major consequences down on Earth. The papers offer differing approaches and methods, but share a common interest in the practical use of space by those in power for supreme national priorities: through the development and deployment of anti-satellite weapons, the scramble for geostationary orbit satellite slots, and the harnessing of lunar exploration in ‘great power competition’.

Reading Against/With the (Colonial) Archive (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Exec 1, ICC s

Revisiting thinkers and concepts of the international (Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working Group) Room: Exec 9, ICC Revisiting thinkers and concepts of the international

Russia’s challenges to the liberal world order (Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group) Room: Exec 10, ICC Papers in this panel will present on Russia’s challenges to the liberal world order

The Politics of International Criminal Law: Historical and Contemporary Investigations (International Law and Politics Working Group) Room: Dhani Prem, The Exchange The Politics of International Criminal Law: Historical and Contemporary Investigations

The interconnectedness of norm definitions and norm contestation (International Relations as a Social Science Working Group) Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange Norms research in International Relations (IR) has grown exponentially in the last 20 years. Scholarship that examines norms or uses them as a theoretical point of analysis can be divided into two distinct waves. The first wave focused almost exclusively on norm dynamics, and how generally liberal norms were successfully promoted by state-level actors and socialised. The second wave, with a more critical ontological outlook, is concerned with how norms are contested and resisted by actors at different levels, although such work still generally focuses on state-level actors. This panel aims to discuss and further scholarship on uniting these two waves of research, from a variety of standpoints, to examine how norms are defined and constituted, how they are then contested, and finally, ask whether different norms at different levels are contested in distinct ways. It seeks to build on the work of Antje Wiener and her Theory of Contestation, as well as Elvira Rosert’s new Typology of Norms as key starting points to bridge these two issues and further discussions on the interplay between norm dynamics and norm contestation.

The nexus of small states between emerging middle powers and competing global actors (International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group) Room: Stuart Hall, The Exchange The panel includes unique case studies which discuss the nexus of small states between emerging middle powers and competing global actors.

Transnational conflict in the Middle East and Africa: a case study for policy and programming (BISA) Room: Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange Transnational conflict in the Middle East and Africa: a case study for policy and programming

Conceptualising AI in Global Society (International Studies and Emerging Technologies Working Group) Room: Exec 1, ICC One of the key areas for reflection in this years conference will be on the new possibilities and risks arise from the apparently unparalleled capacity of new technologies under the umbrella terminology of ‘AI’. From advanced prediction and democratisation, to questions about the role of AI in altering or reproducing logics of coloniality, the papers in this panel theorise the major questions of the moment. What do we really mean by AI in the context of the international? What should, or more importantly, shouldn’t it be used for? How does it change our understanding of power? These areas will be explored in a variety of different approaches and theory perspectives.

Contesting Nuclear and Climate Imperialisms in the Pacific (Global Nuclear Order Working Group) Room: Fortissimo, Hyatt This panel explores nuclear and climate politics in the Pacific as a crucial nexus of gender, race, and imperialism. Inspired by the work of critical scholars such as Teresia Teaiwa and Alice Te Punga Somerville, and brought together by the FemNukes online collective, panellists analyse how Pacific political resistance to nuclear imperialism and climate catastrophe constitutes a total social fact, informing all aspects of contemporary life in Oceania. The panel will develop new conceptualisations and chronologies of nuclear and climate imperialisms and the local and transnational struggles against them; uncover previously hidden or marginalised archives of resistance; and present ethnographic studies of the complex and ambivalent ways that nuclear and climate imperialisms are visualised and narrated. Presenters are all committed to challenging hierarchies within the field of IR, and ask how scholarship can benefit the marginalized communities most impacted by, and most active against, contemporary imperialisms. In addition to focusing on Indigenous activism, all the contributors are attentive to the voices and subjectivities of women, non-binary, and working-class people in the Pacific. Collectively, they underline how nuclear and climate imperialisms and resistances to them continue to (re)shape the communities and lands of the Pacific and resonate over space and time. Chair: Becky Alexis-Martin, University of Bradford, UK Papers: Anais Maurer, Rutgers University, US Pacific Post/Apocalypse: From Nuclear Colonialism to Carbon Imperialism This paper analyzes how Pacific people’s transgenerational struggle against nuclear weapons recontextualizes the global fight against climate change by underscoring the environmental racism at the root of both existential threats. Bombarded with the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb a day, every day, for half a century, Pacific islands have already undergone the environmental collapse looming over the rest of the globe. Yet stories of this ocean on fire by Pacific nuclear survivors reveal an alternative vision of the apocalypse: instead of individualism and toxic masculinity, they center mutual assistance, cultural resilience, South-South transnational solidarities, and Indigenous women’s leadership. These multilingual stories should be shared the world over, particularly in other frontlines against petrocapitalism. Unlike antinuclear activists and climate militants in the global North who barely talk to each other, Pacific environmental activists today draw from their experience of the nuclear apocalypse to cultivate resilience and regeneration in times of climate collapse. Oceania was the first continent to see its environment destroyed by thermonuclear fire on a previously unimaginable scale. It is also the first continent to imagine the new world emerging from the ashes of the old one. Charlotte Weatherill, Open University, UK - ‘Operation Hurricane’: Narrating climate change as part of the ‘imperial mess’ and colonial violence wrought in the Pacific In ‘Two Hundred and Fifty Ways to Start an Essay About Captain Cook´, Alice Te Punga Somerville writes about colonialism in Aotearoa and the Pacific as a story that can be told in endless different ways, each way having its own message. Number 223, ‘In Montebello Islands’, discusses the British nuclear weapons testing programme. The tests were called ‘Operation Hurricane’, and Te Punga Somerville writes, “It is tempting to call the whole imperial mess of the past five centuries ‘Operation Hurricane’” (Te Punga Somerville 2020, 42). From this prompt, this paper asks what happens if you tell the story of climate change in this way. In doing so, the colonial history becomes the present, where coloniality and resistance entwine, and the ‘way out of the mess’ has to be found in a fight against the whole imperial operation. In this chapter, I retell the history of colonial violence in the Pacific region, framing it as part of the same historical politics of disposability, all of which has a counter history of resistance and solidarity. The violence of climate change is confronted and defied through new stories and a rejection of the fantasies of invulnerability upon which coloniality relies. Mililani Ganivet, The British Museum and University of East Anglia, UK Marie-Thérèse and Bengt Danielsson’s archives: a potent force to redraw the historiographical lines in mapping anti-nuclear resistance in French-occupied Polynesia The Kon Tiki Museum hosts the archives of Marie-Thérèse and Bengt Danielsson, two staunched anti-nuclear activists who played a prominent role in the anti-nuclear movement in French-occupied Polynesia during the height of the testing period. Known for their opus Poisoned Reign: French Nuclear Colonialism in the Pacific (first published in 1986), the Danielsson couple gathered materials and documented the anti-nuclear movement while raising awareness globally about the danger of its consequences. And yet, most of their archival documents are untapped resources and remain unseen. This paper seeks to investigate the potency of this archival source and suggest three potential analytical framework they could be used. I argue that if investigated and fully used, it could not only shed a new light on the transnational nature of imperial nuclearism, but it could also shift the current historiographical discourses on anti-nuclear resistance in French-occupied Polynesia. Catherine Eschle, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK Weaving a Transoceanic Web: Antinuclear Solidarities between Greenham Women and Indigenous Pacific Communities This paper examines the solidarity relations constructed in the organisation Women Working for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (WWNFIP). Close attention to this UK-based network, active between 1984 and 1999, is important for two reasons. First, it challenges accepted understandings of the spatial and temporal boundaries of feminist anti-nuclear activism, and of the identities and ideologies of participants in it. Second, it offers important lessons for present-day activism because of its focus on the role of colonial and post-colonial relations of power, and on Indigenous Pacific peoples’ experiences and knowledge. In previous publications, I have examined the textual representation of identity and connection in the archive of newsletters produced by the group between 1984 and 1999. In this paper, I focus on interview testimonies to explore how participants conceptualised relations between Pacific women and UK-based allies, to unpack the material underpinnings and impacts of these relations in the women’s everyday lives, and to trace their affective and political legacies. Lis Kayser, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Nostalgia for Colonial Sexual Desire: Camouflaging Gendered Power Imbalances on the Former Nuclear Base on the Hao Atoll, French Polynesia. While most gendered analyses of the colonial legacy of nuclear testing in the Pacific focus on indigenous female communities’ engagement in regional anti-nuclear movements and their resistance against decades of exploitation and exposure to radiation, this paper takes a different route. Based on fieldwork at the Hao atoll in French-Polynesia, the paper explores the gendered, racialized, and colonial politics of former nuclear bases and asks how they continue to inform the nuclear memory of local female communities. In the early 1960s, the French military transformed Hao into a military support base and airplane decontamination station for nearby nuclear weapons testing. Observing that women and non-binary people in Hao often fondly spoke of the nuclear testing era as a “golden age,” this paper acknowledges women’s complex, sometimes ambivalent experiences of nuclear testing as simultaneously disempowering and empowering. Inspired by Cynthia Enloe’s concept of the “camouflage of normalcy,” I argue that nuclear nostalgia is conditioned by the French military’s transformation of Hao into a militarized space of social inclusion and (colonial) sexual desire, which was a strategy to camouflage the uneven colonial (sexual) relationship of the military with Polynesian (female) islanders and its objectification of the Polynesian female body.

Diverse Challenges to the Protection of Human Rights (Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Responsibility to Protect Working Group) Room: Dolce, Hyatt Diverse Challenges to the Protection of Human Rights

Exhibition Hall Open Room: Hyatt

Has “militarisation” had its day? (Critical Military Studies Working Group) Room: Concerto, Hyatt Following recent provocations suggesting that International Studies should “Forget Militarization” as a core concept (Howell 2018), we wish to reconsider ‘militarisation’ and to ask whether the concept has indeed ‘had its day’. Scholarship has long relied on ‘militarisation’ as an analytical concept for making sense of international relations (e.g., Enloe 2000). Furthermore, scholars have suggested that studies of militarism more broadly suffer from ‘methodological whiteness’ in that they often neglect the racialised and colonial underpinnings of militarism and militarisation (Manchanda & Rossdale 2021). In response, scholars interested in militarism and militarisation have pointed to highly diverse manifestations of militarisation that move beyond ideas of the concept as unidirectional or state centred, focusing instead on the ‘everyday modalities’ through which it is both enacted and resisted (Basham 2022). This panel critically considers the contemporary relevance of militarisation, asking whether the concept should indeed be forgotten, or rather reinvigorated with new thinking and scholarship. We ask what ‘everyday modalities’ are important for understanding how militarisation becomes normalised and reproduced in global and local communities? How might new or creative methodologies enliven our understandings of militarisation? What possibilities might exist for ‘unmaking’ militarised identities (Bulmer & Eichler 2018), and how might critical military studies scholars support this? Which alternative concepts, including and beyond ‘martial politics’ (Howell 2018), might be useful for understanding and critiquing state violence?

Indigeneity and Contested Identities in Conflict and Post-Conflict Settings (Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism) Room: Drawing Room, Hyatt This panel examines ethnicity, conflict, and security. It explores how states employ indigenous forces in post-conflict security, paramilitary mobilisation, the targeting of civilians in counter-insurgency operations, and conflict, displacement, and gender. In doing so, the panel will draw on examples of the contested nature of identity and indigeneity in conflict and post-conflict settings.

Interdisciplinary approaches to the role of state and non-state actors in issues of forced migration (International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group) Room: Boardroom, The Exchange Forced migration is a complex global issue affecting the lives of millions of migrants and presenting increasing challenges for migration governance and management. Scholarship on forced migration issues is well-researched, yet an intricate look at the wide spectrum of state and non-state actors involved in shaping policy on forced migration and responses to forced migrants rights at various levels is understudied. This panel proposal seeks to facilitate a comprehensive and engaging discussion of the roles, responsibilities, and influence of state and non-state actors in framing issues of forced migration, shaping policies concerning forcibly displaced people, and defining vulnerable migrants access to basic rights and services. This panel brings together scholars working across multidisciplinary fields of migration studies, human rights, international relations, and health policy, to develop a deeper understanding of the complexities involved in the dynamics of forced migration from regional perspectives. The paper abstracts focus on the roles and interactions of state and non-state actors in issues concerning anti-migration resistance to international refugee protection norms, the development of national asylum policy, forced migrants rights and reproductive health, and racialised forced migration control measures. Together, this panel seeks to encourage a collaborative approach to centre the rights and dignity of migrants within the discussion of how we can address the challenges of forced migration and the multifaceted roles state and non-state actors play in these settings.

Introduction to Book Publishing (BISA) Room: Room 101, Library This roundtable is intended to provide a valuable service to the BISA community by offering an overview of book publishing, especially for first-time authors. This international group of experienced editors represent both university presses and commercial academic presses. They will both describe and demystify how to get published, what you should expect throughout the process, and what you should do after publication to help make your book a success. Structure: Moderator (scholar) plus five book-publishing panelists. Brief introductions by moderator and then max 10 minutes of prepared remarks by each panelist. • Editors will describe their areas of focus and the types of books that they publish (very brief). • Editors will address their assigned questions. Lots of time for questions and answers from the moderator and audience.

Less, More, Different? Exploring the Global Politics of Post-Growth (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Justham, Symphony Hall Where do we find post-growth (‘beyond growth’) ideas in contemporary global politics? And what would a global politics of post-growth look like compared to the currently prevailing institutions built around the pursuit of (green) growth? The roundtable participants, some of whom are members of the international research network ‘The Global Politics of Post-Growth’ (funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG), address these and related questions by drawing on diverse research agendas. Their work, however, has one key aspect in common: the double aspiration to introduce post-growth thinking into IR scholarship and to ‘globalise’ post-growth scholarship. Located at this budding intersection of critical thinking, the participants discuss the prospects and pitfalls of a global politics of post-growth. The conversation focuses on the potential of post-growth for doing inter-/transnational security and finance differently. In discussing these matters, the participants draw on illustrative examples, including demilitarisation dynamics and (green) extractivism in Latin America, green Islamic finance in Southeast Asia and the role of international organisations in (post-)growth debates. In this context, the roundtable also briefly reports on ongoing and completed work done within and beyond the research network on these and similar topics. Given that for IR at large post-growth presents a formidable theoretical and empirical challenge, the roundtable begins assembling a box of tools that will help us to better understand and, eventually, crack this hard nut.

Military Learning: Command, Leadership, and Failure (War Studies Working Group)

• Antulio J. Echevarria II

Room: Room 102, Library Military Learning: Command, Leadership, and Failure

Ontological security and securitisation theory: identifying overlaps and divergences (Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group) Room: Room 103, Library Ontological security studies (OSS) and securitisation theory have introduced innovative insights and compelling concepts to the discipline of International Relations (IR). Whilst ontological security closely relates to a “security of being” that casts anxiety away, securitisation refers to the political practices of security undertaken whenever an issue is feared and perceived to be existentially threatening to a referent object. Despite their common intersubjective understanding of security and shared emphasis on threats to individual and societal identity, there has not yet been a comprehensive discussion on how these two frameworks intersect, complement each other, and differ. This round table aims to explore potential synergies and points of contention both theoretically and empirically between these two frameworks. It will focus on, but it is not limited to questions such as: • What factors have contributed to the popularity of these two theories in IR and what does it tell us about the explanatory capacity of their core concepts to understand current global affairs? • Can fear and anxiety be regarded as compatible notions in the way they are conceptualised by securitisation and ontological security theories respectively? • What are the central differences between ontological security and securitisation theories, and in which way does this difference allows for broadening their theoretical and empirical scope? • What are the socio-political implications of viewing ontological security through securitisation lenses and vice-versa?

Peacekeeping in a multipolar world: Pluralised or (neo-)imperial peace? (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Exec 10, ICC Though the liberal peace consensus has never been as coherent as its rhetoric implied, dramatic structural shifts within an increasingly multipolar world order have engendered new spaces to contest, liberal hegemony and propose peace and governance approaches historically excluded from understandings of peace-making and peacebuilding. This panel draws on critical research historicising internationally led peace efforts to understand the processes and visions of peace that guide and substantiate such dynamics as they emerge within political, ideational, and material contestations. The desire for alternative perspectives of peace and governance has shifted spaces of resistance from the periphery to the heart of regional and international institutions. Here, non-traditional, non-established and ‘emerging’ powers have increasingly sought to move beyond their operational roles in peace efforts to shape substantive and qualitative dynamics. This shift foregrounds significant challenges regarding the motivations, strategies, and implications of order and peace-making itself. What novel concepts of peace and security have new participants introduced and how do these align with and reformulate the hegemonic neoliberal practices widely promoted in the past decades? Furthermore, in what ways do such interventions disrupt or contest parallel attempts to stabilise and extend existing and traditional arrangements of power in the face of uncertainty, complexity and economic competition? Papers will pay attention to both temporal and spatial dynamics of peace and order making in considering new and contested forms of governance, economics, and societal relations.

Questioning African unity and diplomacy (Africa and International Studies Working Group) Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange This panel examines the functioning of African unity in practice. Its case studies question the reality of an 'African position' on the ICC, show how 'Greater Somalia' and 'Greater Ethiopia' projects have sat awkwardly alongside prevailing norms of African statehood, and examine the 'diplomatic' practice of national liberation movements. Some more overtly theoretical contributions examine the AU as a maker of subsidiary norms and the contribution of African states to global cybernorms.

Reimagining Agency & Identity in International Relations (Post-Structural Politics Working Group) Room: Dhani Prem, The Exchange This panel examines, through both theoretical and empirical interventions, the productive role of power in formations of agency and identity in international relations.

Rethinking Challenges to Mass Atrocity Prevention (Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Responsibility to Protect Working Group) Room: Room 105, Library A panel that brings together papers that focus on exploring pressing challenges to addressing mass atrocity prevention.

Susan Strange @ 100: an enduring legacy for contemporary times (BISA) Room: Sonata, Hyatt We are a group organizing a centenary celebration of the contributions of Susan Strange to IPE and IR. This event will be organized between the LSE and King’s College, and we are going to run it just before BISA. We wish to organize a round table to celebrate the centenary of Strange’s birth (well, really 101 years, but who is counting anyway!), and just over 50 years of IPE (yes, I know there is a debate about this, but just run with us on this one, because it works nicely!). People who are participating in the centenary event are included here.

Teaching ‘terrorism’ critically (Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group) Room: Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange This roundtable will focus on the challenges of teaching terrorism from a critical standpoint. With the Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) approach of questioning the ontological stability of the terrorism thesis (Jackson et al, 2011), how do we introduce students to the idea of ‘terrorism’ without defining it? How do we engage with mainstream approaches to terrorism while maintaining our critical ethos? What does it mean to do research-led teaching within the parameters CTS? Bringing together academics at different career stages, this discussion will help us to learn from their experiences to address these pedagogical questions and tackle the challenges of teaching terrorism critically.

The Coloniality of Security (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Soprano, Hyatt s

Thinking Peace, Conflict and Political Transformation (Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working Group) Room: Exec 5, ICC Thinking Peace, Conflict and Political Transformation

Why Palestine is a Feminist Issue (Gendering International Relations Working Group) Room: Exec 9, ICC This roundtable will discuss why feminists and feminism should care (more) about the question of Palestine and, more generally, about struggles against settler colonialism, dispossession and imperialist violence. As Global South and feminists of colour have demonstrated, western feminism has been historically complicit with colonial projects, ignoring the structural, epistemic and direct harms caused by empire and even supporting military interventions under the banner of “saving women”. The Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 and Israel’s ensuing massive bombardment, destruction and total siege of the Gaza Strip (still ongoing at the time of writing) have once again raised questions about the relationship between western feminism and empire, with academic Maryam Aldossari accusing western feminists of being indifferent to the suffering of Palestinian women trying to survive under Israel’s bombs. Meanwhile, Sisters Uncut, a UK anti-domestic violence group that have been mobilising many pro-Palestine actions throughout the period of Israel’s bombing campaign, refused the false binary of opposing justice for Palestinians on the one hand, and feminism on the other, after the Jewish Chronicle newspaper questioned why a feminist group would care about Gaza. Finally, Palestinian women’s groups have called on women and women’s organizations worldwide “to speak up and rise up to support our struggle to end this genocide”. This roundtable will bring together a range of feminist scholars to further discuss the intersections of feminism, the Palestine question and anticolonial struggle more broadly. Some of the issues that will be considered include: - Building transnational feminist solidarity with Palestinians - Feminist approaches to imperialism, settler colonialism, war and occupation - The gendered dimensions of Israel’s settler colonialism - The gendered impacts of military occupation, siege, war, violence and incarceration - The experiences and agency of Palestinian women at the intersection of colonial violence and patriarchy - Palestinian women’s resistance to occupation, siege, war, violence and patriarchy - History of Palestinian women’s transnational activism - Palestinian women’s involvement in Palestinian political factions and the national movement more broadly

Authoritarian futures? International politics and future-oriented foreign policymaking in authoritarian regimes (University of Birmingham, Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR)) Room: Sonata, Hyatt Contemporary authoritarian regimes are becoming more sophisticated than their twentieth-century counterparts. Countries like Kazakhstan, Rwanda, and Saudi Arabia are building spectacular capital cities often full of steel, glass, and glitzy modernity, whilst others – like Qatar, Singapore, and United Arab Emirates – are charting ambitious long-term visions for the future of their citizens and country. At their heart, these visions challenge the dominant geopolitical narratives of democratic prosperity in the West and authoritarian impoverishment in the East (or South). Instead, they present exciting futures of technological advancement, green innovation, and prosperity unmatched by anything seen and experienced in the West. They position their regimes as future-oriented leaders with sharp foresight and pro-active attitudes, unburdened by the constraints of democratic politics. Put simply, in all their innovation-oriented galore, they make authoritarianism seem the way to the future. How do we address this rising phenomenon of authoritarian future-making? And what impact does it have on international politics? This panel seeks to explore the topic of authoritarian future making and its impact on international politics from multiple disciplinary lenses, including international relations, political science, geopolitics, and area studies.

Beyond Western Paradigms: Adapting Peacebuilding for Africa's Realities (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Exec 5, ICC In our globalized world, Western peacebuilding approaches have gained widespread adoption by international institutions and INGOs for conflict resolution. These models often fall short when applied in diverse local contexts, particularly within the complex framework of Africa. The African continent's rich cultural diversity, complex history, and multifaceted conflicts make the application of Western peacebuilding paradigms a challenging endeavour. While these approaches promise stability, democracy, and development, they often grapple futilely with the complex dynamics in Africa. This discussion aims to examine the strengths and limitations of Western peacebuilding models within the African context, aligning with the theme of the BISA Conference 2024 Peacebuilding work group theme, "Everyday Peacebuilding and Lingering Violence." This narrative emphasizes the importance of this discussion within the conference's thematic framework. Africa, historically influenced by colonization and external ideologies, has shown adaptability and resilience. Western peacebuilding models, when introduced, can be perceived as imposing and presuppose local insufficiency. However, the issue is not incompetence but a matter of context. Understanding the unique historical, political, and socio-cultural backgrounds of each African nation is essential for successful peacebuilding. Our objective in assessing Western peacebuilding models' strengths and weaknesses is to evaluate what has worked and highlight what is not working, and the need to adapt to what may work. There is a need to adopt tailor-made peacebuilding strategies to fit the African environment. This discussion underscores the importance of incorporating non-Western peacebuilding approaches, leveraging indigenous conflict resolution mechanisms, local knowledge, and traditional practices into the broader peacebuilding framework. African realities are distinct, and peace is not a one-size-fits-all pursuit. This exploration challenges the notion of universality in peacebuilding, recognizing that genuine, enduring peace is deeply connected to local contexts and community-driven solutions. Guided by this narrative, we invite participants to explore the intricate landscape of peacebuilding. This journey begins with acknowledging the limitations of historical practices, embracing indigenous wisdom, and moving beyond Western paradigms to foster a future marked by lasting and authentic peace for Africa's diverse nations. The relevance of the proposed panel discussion lies in its potential to contribute to more effective peacebuilding efforts in Africa and beyond. By critically assessing the strengths and weaknesses of liberal peacebuilding in African contexts, the discussion can shed light on the shortcomings of a one-size-fits-all approach to peace interventions. This evaluation paves the way for advocating the incorporation of non-Western models that are more in tune with the local realities and that prioritize the agency of the affected communities. In essence, this panel discussion can offer a platform for constructive dialogue and critical reflection on the current dominant approach to peacebuilding. It provides an opportunity to challenge established norms, improve the relevance of peace interventions, and ultimately contribute to more sustainable and locally adapted strategies for achieving peace and stability in African regions. Several countries in the Global South, particularly in Africa, have encountered challenges and limitations with the application of Western liberal peacebuilding models from 2000 to 2023. These failures can be attributed to several reasons, including cultural differences, historical legacies, and external interventions. Proposed solutions often revolve around adapting peacebuilding strategies to better align with local contexts. Panel Session Structure (1-2 Hours) Introduction (5 minutes) Welcome and opening remarks by the session chair or moderator. Brief introduction of the panel topic, its relevance, and its connection to the conference theme. Panelist Presentations (30-45 minutes) Allocate each panelist to a specific time slot for their presentation. Panelists provide insights, research findings, and experiences related to the topic. Encourage them to focus on the strengths and weaknesses of Liberal Peacebuilding in Africa. Moderated Discussion (15-30 minutes) The moderator will pose questions to the panelists, encouraging a deeper exploration of the topic. Panelists respond to each other's presentations, fostering dialogue and debate. Audience Q&A (10 - 20 minutes) Open the floor for questions from the audience. This allows for engagement and diverse perspectives. Encourage participants to ask questions related to the panel topic and its relevance to everyday peacebuilding and lingering violence. Key Takeaways and Recommendations (10-15 minutes) Summary of the main points discussed during the panel session. Highlight key takeaways and recommendations for addressing the challenges and strengths of Liberal Peacebuilding in Africa. Closing Remarks (5 minutes) The session chair or moderator offers closing remarks and a vote of thanks to the panelists and the audience for their participation. Encourage continued discussions and engagement on the topic beyond the conference. Networking and Informal Discussion (Optional) If time permits, allow participants to network, and engage in informal discussions about the topic. Panelists: 1. MartinLuther Nwaneri, Aston University, Birmingham. Department of Politics and International Relations Rethinking Impact: INGOs Strategies and Peacebuilding in Africa 2. Clyde Collins, Aston University Birmingham, Department of International Relations, and Global Governance. Revisiting Peacebuilding Strategies in South Sudan and the Central African Republic: Beyond Western Paradigms 3. Joan McDappa. PhD researcher at Kingston University, London, specializing in terrorism, counterterrorism, politics, and governance in Africa. Navigating Postcolonial Realities: Decolonial Peacebuilding in African States 4. Shahzad Sher. Aston University, Birmingham and National Defence University, Islamabad. Challenges of peacebuilding on the Western model in the African context. 5. Asma Malik. Dept of International Relations and Global Governance. Aston University, Birmingham Beyond Western Model: Rethinking Peace Paradigms for Local Realities with the Reference of Africa and Asia. Chair/Moderator: Jelena Obradovic – Wochnik. Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Aston University

Counter-Terrorism and Colonial Violence (Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group) Room: Fortissimo, Hyatt This panel brings together papers that explore the continuities and connections between colonial violence and counter-terrorism.

Everyday Militarism (Critical Military Studies Working Group) Room: Boardroom, The Exchange Critical engagements with banal and everyday militarism.

Geocultural Identities in the Making (Historical Sociology and International Relations Working Group) Room: Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange These papers explore the social processes through which spaces and identities are constructed.

Global Governance and macro-level peace (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Concerto, Hyatt Papers examine how peace is constituted at the strategic level

International studies and climate change in the Anthropocene (Environment Working Group) Room: Dolce, Hyatt International studies and climate change in the Anthropocene

Interpreting norms and status in world order (International Relations as a Social Science Working Group) Room: Drawing Room, Hyatt The existing international order is currently under contestation by many state and non state actors. At the heart of the contestation is the question of how norms and status are claimed, interpreted and eventually contested. This panel aims to engage with these issues while providing answers to the following questions: how norms are created, interpreted, adapted; how status is contested; how actors define themselves on the international scene and use narratives to legitimize and delegitimize actions.

Memory and the Afterlives of Empire (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Room 101, Library s

New approaches to theorising emotion in global politics (Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group) Room: Room 102, Library New approaches to theorising emotion in global politics

Norms, Legality & Identity in US Foreign Policy (US Foreign Policy Working Group) Room: Jane How, Symphony Hall n/a

Para-diplomacy, diasporas, and foreign policy of non-state actors (Foreign Policy Working Group) Room: Exec 6, ICC A collection of papers on the foreign policy approaches, and influences of entities other than sovereign states.

Pedagogies for Teaching International Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Interpretivism in International Relations Working Group) Room: Exec 10, ICC This roundtable discusses the challenges students face learning about International Relations (IR) theories, concepts, (intellectual) histories, and day-to-day experiences of international relations in IR classrooms and the challenges lecturers face teaching these subjects in and across different geographies in an age of polycrisis. It explores how racialized, neo-colonial, imperial, gendered and/or patriarchal discourses and practices in global politics, shifts in global power, the curtailing of academic freedom next to the vicissitudes of neoliberal capitalism, global climate change, ecological and environmental crises, technological changes (e.g., rise of artificial intelligence), and students’ ever-growing needs for intellectual safety and safe spaces due to a threatened sense of ontological security affect teaching and learning about IR and global politics. On the basis of this discussion, the roundtable seeks to identify and discuss how and what different critical, reflexive, inclusive, resilient and student-centered pedagogies can effectively address the challenges for teaching and learning about International Relations and global politics in the twenty-first century.

Popular Culture and World Politics – Keeping Pace by Looking ‘Beyond the Mirror’ (Orphan Papers track) Room: Room 105, Library Thinking anew about the challenges posed to the international order makes it incumbent that we look at how world politics is experienced in the everyday whether by the public or political elites. Reflecting the conference theme, the field of popular culture and world politics precisely seeks to diversify our practices and problematise the foundations of our discipline. Here we bring together a fascinating collection of papers which seek to move beyond exploring the content of popular culture (pop culture as mirror) and instead to consider anew how it can inform us in multiple ways. We have papers which explore identity and resistance through music, how soap operas help shape and mould elite value systems and meaning-making practices in diplomacy, how soap operas and their values are received by audiences, and how popular culture informs and fashions complex relationship in revolutionary and counterrevolutionary contexts. Collectively these papers validate the critical role of popular culture to our understanding of the unfolding and rapidly changing dynamics of world politics.

Poster session - Susan Strange @ 100: an enduring legacy for contemporary times

• Andreas Kanaris Miyashiro (Warwick University)
• Kasper Arabi (University of Warwick)
• Korey Pasch (Queens University)
• Oksana Levkovych (London School of Economics and Political Science)
• Dan Wood (University of Warwick)

Room: Exhibitor Hall, Hyatt

Re-visiting the Gulf Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Scope, Theory and Data (International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group) Room: Dhani Prem, The Exchange The study of the Gulf is an emerging academic field under the broader research on the Middle East literature. It is mainly an interdisciplinary area of research, in which multiple understandings and formations of scope, theory and data overlap. This roundtable brings PhD students and scholars working on the six Gulf Cooperation Council states, Iran and Yemen together to delve into the challenges and opportunities in the current study of the Gulf. The participants are from several Gulf nations studying at various academic institutions from diverse professional backgrounds. The purpose of this roundtable is to examine the interdisciplinary approach to scope, theory and data while delving into the politics, economics, society and culture of the Gulf. The participants are either students or academics from several universities across the world bringing a comprehensive and dynamic approach to their experience with studying the sub-region. The roundtable will analyze certain agendas on the emerging discipline and relate the approaches to scope, theory and data with the current regional and global politics connecting the production of knowledge with personal research experiences and changes in the Gulf societies.

Rethinking Connections: The Future of Humanitarianism, Human Protection and Building Peace (Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Responsibility to Protect Working Group) Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange The purpose of the roundtable is to invite exchanges that reflect on the broadening of the Human Rights, Humanitarianism and Responsibility to Protect working group focus, while engaging critically at the same time with the BISA 2024 challenge of identifying whose international studies we should focus on. We are hoping for panellists to engage in a cross disciplinary dialogue across BISA working group themes and topics related to human protection, human rights, institutional responsibilities, the political economy of building peace, and feminist foreign policy. We are asking panellists to consider questions such as, what connections can be made between disciplines in the study of humanitarianism and human protection? Who benefits from this research? How can we bridge the worlds of academia and political commitment? Is our research limited by narrow theoretical approaches or power structures in academia and beyond? When talking about protecting human life, do we need a broadened understanding of with whom responsibility lies?

Russia’s Offensive War Against Ukraine (War Studies Working Group) Room: Justham, Symphony Hall Russia’s Offensive War Against Ukraine

Situating nuclear politics - exploring nuclear politics and places beyond the interstate. (Global Nuclear Order Working Group) Room: Exec 1, ICC International Relations' studies of nuclear politics have traditionally focused on strategies of deterrence and arms control, the international diplomacy of non-proliferation and disarmament and how these practices create an international ‘nuclear order’. This work has been shaped by assumptions of the interstate as the location of nuclear politics, the prominence of nuclear armed states as the international actors, and the separation of nuclear weapons from ‘peaceful’ nuclear power. This panel expands and challenges these traditional focuses and assumptions of IR by looking below, above and beyond the interstate. The papers on this panel examine how nuclear politics is practiced in specific places and illustrate how the nuclear is not an inherently exceptional realm but connected to other social and political issues. This panel presents an analytical shift by examining the key roles of subnational and extranational processes and actors in shaping nuclear spaces. The panel includes research on the creation of nuclear spaces and communities around the world, the situated politics of nuclear waste and impact of nuclear testing, and the role of actors who are often neglected in nuclear politics.

Theorising Foreign Policy (Foreign Policy Working Group) Room: Exec 9, ICC This roundtable explores avenues to advance theorising in FPA. While the international and domestic environments of foreign policy have changed radically over recent years, we have only seen relatively modest innovations in FPA’s theoretical toolkit. It seems timely, therefore, to develop and critically assess possible new directions in FPA theorising. To this purpose, the roundtable will explore, for example, the implications of the increasing politicisation of foreign policy and how this can be theorised. Particular emphasis in this regard will be placed on the rise of populism on the one hand and the rise of feminist concerns/feminist foreign policy on the other hand. The participants will also ask whether our (Western) understanding of the state and statehood is an appropriate point of departure for theorising foreign policy making, as well as the extent to which processes of regional integration might urge us to change our understanding of typically state-focused foreign policy making. A related issue is how Western-centred FPA theories can be advanced by insights from the global south. A final question is whether, and how, the recent wave of leader-oriented IR scholarship can be brought into conversation with the extant FPA literatures on leaders in foreign policy.

Unpacking the ongoing tech war between China and the United States (International Studies and Emerging Technologies Working Group) Room: Stuart Hall, The Exchange Both domestic and foreign policies pursued by the governments of the United States and China are increasingly pointing in the direction of great power competition. Within this, technology, and in particular the pursuit of certain emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and 5G wireless networks, plays a key role. In this context of competition, economic and technological interdependence is portrayed as a serious threat to national security. This breaks with a long-established tradition of liberal thought which praises the cooperation-inducing potential of economic interdependence and the socialization potential of embedding illiberal states into international organizations associated with the liberal international order. By contrast, it features a different kind of thinking which portrays global connectivity as something threatening that, at best, should be limited to like-minded partners. The papers in this panel aim to analyze key aspects of these dynamics as they have crystallized in the so-called US-Sino tech war.

Working group convener meeting

• Juanita Elias (University of Warwick)
• Juliet Dryden (BISA)
• Kyle Grayson (BISA)
• Chrissie Duxson (BISA)

Room: Room 103, Library

Young people, politics, and peace networking meeting Room: Drawing Room, Hyatt

A tribute to the work of Christopher Coker – The Return of History: Christopher Coker and The Study of War (Africa and International Studies Working Group) Room: Room 101, Library A tribute to the work of Christopher Coker – The Return of History: Christopher Coker and The Study of War

Advocacy, Protest and Activism (Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism) Room: Boardroom, The Exchange The causes and consequences of protest and violent activism(s) form the basis for this panel, which brings together researchers working on different forms of advocacy, protest, and (violent) activism. The panel will explore how extremist groups use online technology, how resources and ecology shape protest, and how conspiracy theories and anarchism fuel anti-government activism.

Emotions and the politics of subjectivity (Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group) Room: Concerto, Hyatt Emotions and the politics of subjectivity

Everyday Ethics of the International: New imaginaries of relation, negotiation and care (Ethics and World Politics Working Group) Room: Room 102, Library Recent years have a seen a proliferation of approaches to global politics that emphasise a concern with the everyday. For some, the everyday is a site of discipline and government, where routines and bodies are ordered; for others, it is a site of resistance, where previously untapped subversive tactics can perform global politics otherwise. This everyday turn has featured across IR, Security and IPE, but also across critical perspectives including feminism, post-/decolonialism, constructivism, post-structuralism and queer theory. A basic insight is that the everyday can provide important empirical, theoretical and political extensions to study the international. This panel contributes to this emerging terrain, foregrounding the everyday as site for the imagination and negotiation of global ethics. Beyond the traditional binaries (ideal/non-ideal, cosmopolitan/communitarian), the everyday can help us reflect on how such narratives are imagined, enacted or forgotten. An everyday ethics of the international engages with the ongoing and lived negotiation of clashing responsibilities, values and emotions in often banal sites and quixotic relationships, where obligations are expressed in changing vernaculars rather than abstract universals. It asks, how can starting from the everyday change our perspective on ethical dilemmas in IR? What are the dangers and potentials of such an approach?

Feminist approaches to the everyday: Common people in a Complex World (Gendering International Relations Working Group) Room: Room 103, Library While orthodox IR tends to centre on the strategic underpinnings of international security, feminists and queer scholars tell us that safety and ontological security are key to people's everyday existence. This panel brings together papers that offer multifaceted approaches to interrogate this embodied sense of safety.

Frontiers, The Final Frontier: Narratives, Emotions, And Technologies Of Governance (International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group) Room: Dolce, Hyatt Borders and frontiers are often taken to be synonymous, yet it is the border that receives attention in International Studies. With practices of offshoring, narratives of invasion, hostile environment strategies, and ‘borderwork, borders are no longer taken to be at the limit of a state’s sovereignty; they are dispersed internally and externally. Thus, the border is simultaneously an everyday phenomenon, a technology of governance, and an event. However, the interrelated concept of the frontier has received comparatively little attention. Borders were the limits of territory, but their delocalisation has resulted novel approaches to their study. Through analyses of biometrics, narratives, vernaculars, and irregularity, this panel interrogates what happens to the frontier when the border is no longer where it was once thought to be. Imbued with notions of coloniality, exploration, expansion, and humanitarianism, the frontier is more than metaphor, it is a site of social convergence and disjuncture. Therefore, this panel interrogates the relationship between the frontier and the border and whether a change in the border changes the frontier. Through analyses of novel ‘bordering’ practices, and the narratives around them, we offer multiple conceptions of the frontier and how to approach it.

In the shadow of bipolarity? The Space Age beyond the United States and China (Astropolitics Working Group) Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange As China and the United States continue to push ahead with mass satellite deployments, quickened launch schedules, and ambitious lunar programmes, are we entering a new bipolar era in space like that of the Soviet-U.S. Cold War? Or, have other actors done enough to warrant another label to describe the international order in space? Does India’s Lunar triumph in 2023, and possible first crewed spaceflight in late 2024, alter the calculations somewhat? How far will Russia’s decline go? Dozens of states and companies registered within them are active in space and are collectively shaping the governance of outer space. Or are they? Join in conversation with a collection of space researchers offering their own perspectives on such questions of power, governance, and rule-making in space. What role is there for non-state actors, civil society, and other communities in a busier and more globalised Space Age? What role is there for states, communities, and organisations that have no presence in space themselves yet will be directly impacted by the industrialisation of outer space? Whilst ‘space for all’ is a common mantra in space treaties, policies, and corporate messaging, this roundtable will grapple with the prospect of a Chinese and US led order in outer space as other powers and interests seek to make their mark in Earth orbit and beyond.

Migrants and Refugees in the UK (International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group) Room: Dhani Prem, The Exchange This panel focusses on migrants' and diasporans' lives in the UK.

Norms, nations, and identity crises in global politics (Orphan Papers track) Room: Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange Norms, nations, and identity crises in global politics

Political economies of security and geopolitics (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Room 105, Library A panel on the theme of political economies of security and geopolitics

Re-thinking and resisting in Critical Military Studies (Critical Military Studies Working Group) Room: Drawing Room, Hyatt How can we think anew about taken for granted concepts in CMS? And, how can we resist?

Review of International Studies - RIS @ 50. On the Horizon: The futures of IR (BISA) Room: Jane How, Symphony Hall Review of International Studies - RIS @ 50. On the Horizon: The futures of IR

The Intersectional Politics of Nuclear Weapons and Disarmament (Global Nuclear Order Working Group) Room: Exec 1, ICC The threat of nuclear war has once again emerged as a focus of IR scholarship, and critical approaches to nuclear weapons are resurging in the context of a ‘new nuclear age’. In this dangerous new era, nuclear crises intersect with other global crises; such as climate change, conventional conflicts, militarism, misogyny, racism, imperialism, and populism. This panel draws together a diverse range of papers that explore the intersectional politics of nuclear weapons. Through an examination of nuclear weapons and their relation to different issues, identities, temporalities, and contexts, these papers broaden our understanding of nuclear weapons policy and disarmament advocacy, and call for a rethinking of political possibilities in the global nuclear order.

The foreign policy and international relations of authoritarian middle-powers (University of Birmingham, Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR)) Room: Soprano, Hyatt Amidst the current global wave of autocratisation, two countries – China and Russia – have dominated academic and media discourse. This has resulted in a tendency to overlook the role of authoritarian middle powers (Grzywacz and Gawrycki 2021; Sandal 2014), a category of states that is receiving growing attention but remains under-theorised. This group includes Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, to which some researchers have added other countries such as Malaysia, Thailand or Venezuela (e.g. Burton 2021; Han 2022). The limited literature on the foreign policy of these states is particularly significant because it has been argued that the role middle-powers play in the future is unlikely to be in line with the findings and predictions of the classic literature. First, many emerging middle-powers are predominantly authoritarian, while the classic literature was based on democratic cases. Second, current transformations in global international relations may create additional opportunities for middle-power agency. This panel will discuss the conceptualization, theorization and current behaviour of authoritarian middle-powers, including their likely impact on the international system and its rule-based order.

The label of ‘terrorism’ and the permissibility of violence (Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group) Room: Sonata, Hyatt The Critical Studies on Terrorism sub-discipline was created 20 years ago to interrogate the concept of terrorism and the violence that is perpetrated to counter it. Following the latest episode Israeli state violence in Gaza, we want to re-open this conversation and reflect on how the label of terrorism has been used to justify war crimes and ethnic cleansing. This enquiry is urgent because the discourse on terrorism has not only made permissible unparalleled state oppression but is also being used to curtail the expression of solidarity everywhere, with Western governments maligning Palestine solidarity efforts and imposing restrictions on free speech and the right to protest.

Towards an IPE of Raced Finance: a conversation (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Exec 9, ICC The roundtable aims to interrogate and advance scholarship on finance as the lifeblood of racial capitalism. The participants will provide theoretical, methodological, and empirical re-conceptions of the relationship between finance and race, re-orienting the field of International Political Economy (IPE) to cutting edge and new directions which address the most pressing issues relevant to the discipline today. The roundtable will debate the extent to which racial capitalism is inseparable from financial power, and how a focus on the latter can help us better understand the ways in which race and capital are entangled and shape each other. Reciprocally, studying race/capital can also yield fresh insight in the IPE of finance.

Whose Counter-terrorism? (Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group) Room: Exec 10, ICC In the aftermath of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the rejection of French counter-terrorism operations in several Sahelian countries, and the rise of new geopolitical actors, the question of “whose counterterrorism?” has become especially prescient. In this panel, we aim to disentangle the relations, contestations, and negotiations inherent to contemporary counter-terrorism operations. Recent research on counter-insurgency (COIN) interventions warns against viewing knowledge production in matters of military and security intervention as unidirectional, emanating from actors based in the Global North to those sites of intervention in the Global South. Instead, this strand of research argues, counter-terrorism and COIN interventions are co-produced, and increasingly take on features and practices that coincide with a 'local turn' in counter-insurgency interventions and policing more broadly (see Moe and Muller 2017; Hönke and Muller 2016). Other relational-holistic takes have employed theoretical concepts such as 'assemblages', 'counter-insurgency governance', 'patchwork of counter-terrorism' and 'entanglements' to better understand cooperation dynamics in settings of security and military intervention (see Frowd & Sandor 2018; Charbonneau 2021; D'Amato 2021; Stambøl and Berger 2023). To what extent do these recent theoretical approaches adequately capture the dynamics we observe? How useful are they at articulating the forms of competition and contestation over how counter-terrorism and COIN interventions unfold on the ground? How has the global critique of post-colonial hierachies influenced the practices and reception of such interventions? In what ways does the decolonial turn illuminate contradictions inherent in current counterterrorism doctrines, such as the assumption that counterterrorism violence in the GWoT can be legitimated to affected populations to produce political order and the (ephemeral) creation of "stabilised states"? To what extent have south-south collaborations carved out an alternative vision of counterterrorism? How have trends in counterterrorism such as ‘population centric counterinsurgency’, ‘tailor-made', or ‘context sensitive’ interventions influenced practice? Who are these new approaches to counterterrorism designed to benefit, whose interests are met or challenged, and what are the stakes involved? The panel examines these questions from multiple perspectives with papers drawn from research conducted in Iraq, Niger, Ghana and elsewhere.

Youth, Violence and Conflict transformation: Exploring mobilization into violence and the role of youth in peacebuilding (International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group) Room: Stuart Hall, The Exchange Alarm caused by the burgeoning global youth population and young people’s potential roles in causing or sustaining conflict have been well documented, whilst their contribution to building peace is often overlooked. Young people often present a combative or destabilising force within post-conflict communities, but they also work on the frontlines of peacebuilding, contributing to the rebuilding of civil society and the local economy. Their lack of political representation and their marginalisation from decision-making in many conflict-affected societies explains why these positive contributions go unrecognized, whilst disparities that young face in accessing economic, political and socio-cultural resources explains why the impact of youth peacebuilding activity is sometimes limited. Over the past 5 years, these challenges have been explored through research in five case sites as part of the programme “Youth, Violence and Conflict transformation”. The results of this research in Algeria, Colombia, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, and Bosnia, will be presented in this panel, with the aim of understanding how can the peacebuilding sector can be enabled to listen and act upon youth voices in seeking to bring about political change and positive peace.

Cultural heritage in peace and conflict – from theory to practice (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Exec 6, ICC Heritage is often at risk and under attack, either directly or indirectly, when violence and conflict escalate. Although targeting cultural heritage sites during conflict is not a new development, the role of cultural heritage in times of peace and conflict has gained international attention in the past few years. Attacks on heritage during violent conflict in Syria, Ukraine and Iraq, as well as contestation around monuments in the US and UK have gained widespread attention. There has also been an increasing amount of funding targeted for the protection of heritage sites in conflict areas. Discussions on the role of cultural heritage practices and sites in provoking conflict, but also as opportunities for building peace have gained prominence (Harrowell & Sellick, 2023). However, much of the focus has been placed on tangible cultural heritage, whereas lesser attention, both in policy and academia, has been on the impact of conflict and war on intangible cultural heritage. This roundtable gathers together both academics and practitioners to discuss the role of intangible and tangible cultural heritage in conflict, from theory to practice. Drawing on number of different case studies, the participants will focus on questions such as how heritage interventions intersect with conflict dynamics and power relations in conflict-affected contexts. What impact this has on building peaceful communities? What is role of both intangible and tangible cultural heritage in conflict? What are the implications for organisations seeking to protect and restore conflict-affected heritage? Convenors: Laura Sulin, Centre for Trust, Peace & Social Relations, Elly Harrowell, Centre for Trust, Peace & Social Relations Aurélie Broeckerhoff, Centre for Trust, Peace & Social Relations Marwan Darweish, Centre for Trust, Peace & Social Relations Mahmoud Soliman, Visiting Fellow, Centre for Trust, Peace & Social Relations

Egyptian Stories: Narrating Spatial Memories in Evanescent Spaces of Belonging (Africa and International Studies Working Group) Room: Boardroom, The Exchange In Arabic Cairo- Al Qahira- officially translated as the Vanquisher (or the Conquerer), standing strong against all odds, vanquishing its enemies across time and space. However, the Arabic word hold another meaning: the Oppressive one. The dichotomy of strength, driven by the city’s people, history and culture, and oppressiveness embedded in its very structure, is the work of the panelists. In a multidisciplinary approach, the panelists- six Cairenes- excavate the City’s memoires locked in its evanescent neighborhoods, and the muted voices of its resilient inhabitants. Through a critical political examination of the City; its material existence, as well as its erasure, its ever-changing tempos, the violence embedded in it, and the violence that expands with it, and resistance that raises and falls within it. While telling a story(ies), when things were said/ and things have been hidden and muted, the narrators question the linearity of time. While narrating spaces as Cairenes, the narrators question their belonging to the City, as the City expands at the cost of their memories and spaces of liberation.

European National Security Strategies: Dynamics of Change (European Security Working Group) Room: Exec 5, ICC European National Security Strategies: Dynamics of Change

Feminist Security Studies: Gendering, Strategy, Tactics (Gendering International Relations Working Group) Room: Sonata, Hyatt Feminist contributions to international security are more relevant than ever, not least in a world defined by patriarchal leadership and power relations, instability, war, conflict as well as new weapons and technologies. Feminist provide new insights into such strategic developments by employing an intersectional approach to the study of drones, border wars and collective violence. This panel provides a range of feminist interventions on pressing issues in global politics.

Global Social Theory and 'The International' (Historical Sociology and International Relations Working Group) Room: Exec 10, ICC These papers look the social foundations of international relations and development, unveiling theoretical and political premises at its core, and pointing towards possibilities of rethinking those.

Global climate governance: Policies and finances of the climate crisis (Environment Working Group) Room: Exec 9, ICC Global climate governance: Policies and finances of the climate crisis

Meet the Editors of Review of International Studies, European Journal of International Security and International Affairs (BISA) Room: Jane How, Symphony Hall Meet the Editors of Review of International Studies, European Journal of International Security and International Affairs

Militarised childhoods and resistance in education (Critical Military Studies Working Group) Room: Dhani Prem, The Exchange This panel explores the intersections between militarism, education, and childhood.

Narratives and dilemmas of global security (European Journal of International Security) Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange Narratives and dilemmas of global security

Negotiated State-Building: Unravelling the Complex Relationship between the State and Non-State Actors (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Stuart Hall, The Exchange Modern state-buidling increasingly involve complex negotiations and interactions between the state and non-state actors leading to contrasting results to order and wider state-building efforts. These negotiations and interactions are particularly key in (post)-conflict settings that are prone to volatility. This panel characterises key non-state actors which includes but are not limited to warlords, militias, rebels, insurgent groups and others emerging as significant players in shaping the trajectory, character, and eventual outcome of state development, particularly in fragile contexts. Concurrently, shifts in the state’s policy choices such as inclusivity by co-opting these actors or exclusivity by disrupting them can often produce varied results in different contexts. This panel seeks to delve into the multifaceted roles of non-state actors, charting their power structures, organisational settings, evolving strategies, and motivations. Key in this respect will be analysing the ramifications of these factors on state development across diverse contexts. Isar's paper examines the impacts of political elites' co-option and disruption by the Afghan states, arguing that the former led to order while the latter resulted in instability. Similarly, Piccolino explores how informal, illiberal strategies of co-option and appointments was effective in Côte d’Ivoire. Monroy-Santander and Carranza-Franco, looking at Colombia, delve into how criminal groups feeling excluded escalated military actions and sought amnesty, while victim associations leveraged transitional justice for resistance and influence. In addressing insurgency in Northeast India, Waterman shows how the state approach shifted from relying on force to a mix of deal-making, violent management and creeping forms of state-building which led to eroding certain insurgent groups while bolstering others. Finally, Nott and Bose discuss rebel-civilian interactions in Mexico arguing how the role of civilians impacted the behaviour of rebels governing them to transform more democratically than the state they were autonomous from.

Perspectives on Nuclear Narratives: Discourses, Ethics, and Global Implications (Global Nuclear Order Working Group) Room: Drawing Room, Hyatt Perspectives on Nuclear Narratives: Discourses, Ethics, and Global Implications

Political economies of development (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Room 101, Library A panel on the theme of political economies of development

Popular Culture and World Politics – new sites of activity in a changing world (Orphan Papers track) Room: Room 102, Library As world politics morphs and evolves it is becoming ever more important to explore diverse sites in which world politics unfolds. Popular culture, which ebbs and flows across time and space is a crucial repository of world politics which is multiplying and intensifying in everyday life in ever more impactful forms. This panel explores these developments by looking at a number of sites in which world politics manifests itself in everyday life. Two of the papers explore technologically driven change within memes and social media which present users with challenging content such as extremism and militarism, frequently through visual forms or driven by the affordances within the technology. Our other papers consider more analogue sites such as museums and art, albeit ones which citizens will similarly encounter in unexpected ways. Cumulatively we show that world politics is becoming ever more important in shaping what we come to know of as world politics, and through that presents challenges to the discipline as a whole in relation to how we come to know what we know.

Populist foreign policies, authoritarianism, and democratic back-sliding (Foreign Policy Working Group) Room: Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange A collection of papers on populism, authoritarianism, and democratic back-sliding globally.

Screening event: Keynote speaker Ed Hall, "Forced out" Room: Justham, Symphony Hall

The World of the Right: A Discussion (Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working Group) Room: Room 103, Library The starting point for this Roundtable is the book 'World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and Global Order' (Cambridge University Press 2024). The book develops an analysis of the radical Right as a global phenomenon, and argues that its ideologues and activists have developed extensive, divers transversal alliances and political strategies with potentially significant implications for global order. The Roundtable will discuss the book's argument and contribution, and also reflect on the challenges represented by the radical Right for the discipline of International Relations and for contemporary global politics.

The emotional politics of leadership (Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group) Room: Fortissimo, Hyatt The emotional politics of leadership

US Diplomacy, Alliance Politics and Economic Security (US Foreign Policy Working Group) Room: Room 105, Library n/a

Understanding diplomacy and peace processes (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Dolce, Hyatt Papers understand structured approaches to peace through Unity Governments, international settlement, diplomacy, and peace agreements

Whose foreign policy? Re-assessing Turkey in International Relations after the Centenary (International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group) Room: Exec 1, ICC Turkish foreign policy has undergone profound transformations in the history of the Republic, and specifically since the 1990s. There is a lively debate in academia as well as the broader public about the determinants and consequences of Turkish foreign policy. The 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Republic has further contributed to reflections about the development iof Turkey's role in international politics. Yet many of these assessments have been written from very particular angles and from very specific viewpoints. In this panel, we want to re-visit some of this work to which we have also contributed but take a step back and look at who the "principals" of Turkish foreign policy have been, while also providing a multiperspectival and more nuanced analyses of Turkish foreign policy, highlighting its ambiguities and turning points.

‘Making the Sandwiches’: Gender, Race, Social Reproduction, and Academic Labour (University of Birmingham, School of Government/POLSIS Gender and Feminist Theory Research Group (GAFT)) Room: Soprano, Hyatt Who does what labour? Who gives what? Who carries what? And, for how long? Academic labour is a profoundly gendered and racialised practice. The phrase ‘making the sandwiches’ reprises the age-old sexist stereotype that women belong to the domestic sphere, aka the kitchen (Smith 2015). This is reflected across academia where departments are often run on a gendered division of labour which maps onto the division of labour and gendered inequalities that are rooted in structures and processes of political economy (True 2012). According to Nicola Smith (2015) that labour is divided between ‘wife work’ – teaching, admin, and service work, and, to extend the metaphor, ‘husband work’, coded as ‘proper’, academic work, aka research, which carries all the gendered and racialised associations and expectations that link expertise with white, male, able bodies. This has exacerbated levels of underrepresentation and inequality in the sector. The UK political science landscape highlights striking representational issues: women, and particularly women of colour, are severely under-represented across political science departments, thinning higher-up the ranks, especially at professorial levels. Pushing for change itself is a form of gendered labour resulting in depletion (Rai, Hoskyns, & Thomas 2013), not least because institutions are often resistant to gender change. “‘We still have a long way to go’ is the catchphrase used by patriarchy to gain time, justify its opposition to change and lull feminist analysers into believing that real progress are made” (Puechguirbal 2012, 15). This roundtable brings together colleagues grappling with the question: “What, in short, does it mean to make a sandwich, and who is being asked to make it?” (Smith 2015). Calling for cross-departmental thinking, and applying feminist theories, the roundtable considers feminist solutions for change.

Critical engagements with war and war labour (Critical Military Studies Working Group) Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange This panel explores how we can think differently about war and its practices.

Depletion – the cost of social reproduction: 10 years on (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Stuart Hall, The Exchange The concept of depletion through social reproduction (DSR) (Rai Hoskyns and Thomas 2014) seeks to capture the costs borne individuals, communities and societies when the socially necessary work of social reproduction is undervalued and un supported. Emerging out of feminist IPE work exploring how and why women tend to bear the brunt of economic crises, the DSR concept provides a conceptual language for thinking about how economic restructuring is experienced as a gendered harm, how such harms can be mitigated and also how they can be destabilized as part of feminist struggles against economic injustice. This panel has been formulated to reflect on how feminist IPE work on depletion has developed in the decade following the publication of Rai et al’s article ‘Depletion: The Cost of Social Reproduction’. The roundtable brings together scholars who have engaged with this concept from a range of perspectives and different locations. The panellists are invited to reflect on how the concept has informed their work and the field o feminist IPE more broadly and to reflect on what insights the concepts brings to thinking about contemporary global political and economic transformations and challenges. The panel coincides with the 2024 publication of Shirin M. Rai’s book Depletion: the human costs of caring (OUP) – an important milestone in the development of feminist IPE which this panel also seeks to celebrate.

Ethics and World Politics (Ethics and World Politics Working Group) Room: Exec 5, ICC This panel interrogates a range of pressing ethical issues in contemporary international relations and world politics, addressing issues including the ethics of war, multilateralism, international morality, consent in a digital age, and the ethics of vulnerability in reserach.

Identity construction: Soft power, mediation, public diplomacy, security policy (Foreign Policy Working Group) Room: Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange This panel comprises of several papers that examine how countries and political regions use foreign policy and security approaches for purposes of constructing identity.

Multiple Practices of Humanitarianism and Beyond (Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Responsibility to Protect Working Group) Room: Exec 10, ICC Multiple Practices of Humanitarianism and Beyond

NATO at 75: Challenging Times (European Security Working Group) Room: Sonata, Hyatt In July 2024 NATO will mark its 75th anniversary at a summit in Washington, DC. NATO's longevity is remarkable and it has emerged from the first eighteen months of the Ukraine war with a renewed sense of purpose. Yet NATO faces continued uncertainty and serious challenges. These include: the evolution and eventual endpoint of the war in Ukraine; the possible re-election of a NATO-sceptic US President (Donald Trump) in November 2024; long-term uncertainties about the balance and relationship between NATO and the EU; the issue of whether and how a more stable long-term relationship with Russia might be constructed; the issue of whether and how NATO may be relevant to the strategic challenge posed by China's rise and Sino-American geo-strategic competition; and the question of what role (if any) the alliance may have in addressing the global problem of climate change. This round-table will explore these issues, addressing both policy challenges and how IR and political science concepts and theories can help us think through NATO at 75.

No feminism without anticolonialism: towards a just feminist international thinking (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Soprano, Hyatt That some strands of dominant feminisms (including academic feminist work) have consistently been unable to grapple with the liberationist pasts and presents of feminist thinking and solidaristic organising is not a new story. These silences among ‘feminists’ become even more pronounced in times of imperial wars, settler coloniality and genocidal violence, and often emerge as a wilful refusal to build bridges across struggles or identify the intertwined nature of gender with racialisation and coloniality. This critique comes alive in a 2023 protest poster calling for ceasefire in Gaza that reads ‘Feminist Silence on Palestine, Sudan, Congo is Patriarchal Violence’. Decolonial feminist thinker Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso has carefully demonstrated how often the interests of feminists in Latin America and beyond diverge from anti-racist and anticolonial struggles, and insists that we map these ‘feminist’ silences and expose ‘feminist’ complicities that have failed to recognise that liberal frameworks and agendas are often ungirded by colonial frames of thinking. Within IR, this is reflected in how analysing the gendered effects of war are often delinked from the root causes of why wars are waged, or how occupations often take hold because of the imperial, racist, ethnonationalist and violent conceptions of state sovereignty. Further, the persistence of ‘women-centric’ or even ‘peace and security’ discourses have failed to sufficiently account for the violence of coloniality that most of the world continues to live with. Differential processes and effects of war and occupations not only impact women but also marginal racialised subjects including men who are stripped of their humanity. Or how discourses around queer and gender liberation are often co-opted by violent states to further their colonial agendas. Thinking through feminism as a project of collective liberation, this roundtable refuses liberal, imperial and racist feminist iterations, and engages with anticolonialism as both imperative and urgent for a feminist politics of planetary social justice. This roundtable brings together scholars working with communities and issues rendered marginal within dominant critical studies of the international, and how they imagine feminism as always entangled with the politics of anticolonialism. In thinking with the questions of ethics, location, accountability and creative methodologies, this roundtable directly responds to the BISA theme of ‘whose international studies?’ by locating the place of anticolonial feminisms in the international we are thinking with/towards. The roundtable features early career scholars engaging with gender, state, human/non-human, borders, de/anti/postcolonial feminisms, war and coloniality who will discuss how we can weave anticolonialism in our feminist praxis, and how we can collectively imagine a ‘just’ international that centres collective liberation.

Peacekeeping, Peacebuilding and conflict resolution (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Exec 9, ICC Papers examine different facets of military peacekeeping, with attention paid to partnerships, contribution, civilian protection, and the role of intervention in conflict resolution frameworks

Precision: The American Way of War? - In conversation with Professor Mick Cox and Professor Caroline Kennedy-Pipe (War Studies Working Group) Room: Dolce, Hyatt We think of precision warfare as a modern invention, closely associated with the Gulf War, the Kosovo Campaign and drone technologies. But its origins go back much further in history. As historian James Patton Rogers reveals in his new book, 'Precision: A History of American Warfare', this quest to achieve precision in war began in 1917, during the early years of powered flight in the United States. This means that precision has been a significant, if not always achievable, feature of American strategic thought for more than a hundred years. In this BISA War Studies Roundtable, leading of foreign policy and security analyse the core arguments put forward in Dr Patton Rogers' new book and debate the future of precision warfare, drones, and American military power. The session will be followed by a drinks reception and book launch sponsored by Manchester University Press. Chairs – Dr James Patton Rogers (Cornell) & Dr Patrick Bury (Bath) Discussion – Professor Mick Cox (LSE) & Prof Caroline Kennedy-Pipe (Loughborough)

Re-focusing transnational connectivities: new conversations on diasporas, activism, and repression. (International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group) Room: Concerto, Hyatt This interdisciplinary panel brings together scholars working on diaspora politics and transnational connectivities. Centring the voices and experiences of those engaged in – and subjected to - these dynamics, the panel focuses on different aspects of the diaspora experience to better understand 1) how diasporas operate as transnational agents of change; 2) the transnational constraints and mechanisms of repression affecting their members. This is a necessary endeavour as, despite the proliferation of scholarship on migration, diasporas, transnational repression, and transnational activism, these debates rarely intersect. As these topics increasingly grow as the focus of domestic and foreign policies for both host and home states, we seek to take a transnational approach to focus on the cross-border activities of both diasporas and states. This interdisciplinary conversation contributes to a better understanding of the transnational dimension of diaspora agency, activism and repression, answering calls for more intersectional and inclusive approaches in international studies.

Rethinking epistemologies and representation in international studies (Orphan Papers track) Room: Boardroom, The Exchange Rethinking epistemologies and representation in international studies

Shifting roles in Middle East politics: collaborators, newcomers and dealbreakers (International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group) Room: Jane How, Symphony Hall This panel includes four abstracts focusing on Middle East politics through the lens of role theory. Each paper has a separate case study of role theory in terms of analysing the pursuit of power and alliances in the region. Kuwait, Turkey, Russia, Syria, Libya, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia are the countries whose overlapping interests and roles are elaborated on in the panel papers. This panel aims to re-visit role theory approaches to contemporary conflicts in the region to build a solid and comprehensive literature.

Spatial Logics of Violence in Global Politics (Post-Structural Politics Working Group) Room: Drawing Room, Hyatt This panel examines how violence in global politics is enacted and reproduced through spatial logics.

The politics of development: Institutions, interests, and ideas (University of Birmingham, International Development Department (School of Government)) Room: Room 101, Library The roundtable discusses a textbook on the politics of development due to be published in 2024. Everything about development is political. Politics is not an add-on, or a discrete academic angle on development, but rather, the way development happens. Explicitly recognising this encourages us to analyse development politically. This panel seeks to advance the analysis of the politics of development by exploring the political dynamics behind the everyday lived realities that prevent people from realising the resources, rights, and freedoms they need and value. We conceptualise the politics of development as a process of contesting alternative desired futures. Everywhere this happens, there are formal structures and informal rules or institutions in place, being contested by more (or less) rational actors with competing power and interests, driven by underpinning ideas about what is right and fair. The panel explores how these three ‘I’s of the politics of development can bring a fresh lens on some of most pressing development challenges facing the world today, showing that politics is not only an obstacle, but the way change happens.

Theorising (counter)terrorism (Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group) Room: Room 102, Library This panel brings together papers that engage with concepts, theories and methodologies we use to critically research and assess (counter)terrorism.

Theorising International Orders – historical and social scientific perspectives (International Relations as a Social Science Working Group) Room: Room 103, Library Responding to the conference theme ‘Whose international studies?’, and at the backdrop of the crisis of the liberal international order, this panel seeks to contribute to the debates about international orders from diverse social scientific and historical perspectives. It interrogates the issues of hierarchy, injustice, and disorder, as well as unacknowledged normativity and systems qualities as related to international orders. Presenting research by a diverse body of early-career and mid-career UK-based researchers, the panel promises cutting-edge debate about the nature, strengths, problems and transformation of international orders, this both as a theoretical concept and as a practice of global politics.

What do we know about war in 2024? (Journal of Global Security Studies) Room: Justham, Symphony Hall 'What do we know about war in 2024?'

Whose International Studies are we teaching? (Learning and Teaching Working Group) Room: Exec 1, ICC There is an increasing discussion on decolonising teaching practices and the curriculum In the UK High Education. However, decolonisation is a contested term. In the area of International Studies, there is evidence that most of our International Studies curriculum is white, heteronormative coming from the so-called Global North Countries. International Studies is considered an Western and Eurocentric discipline. In that sense, this roundtable proposes to reflect on the following questions “Whose International Relations are we teaching?; “Should we change that?”; “How can we change that?”. The participants will reflect on their teaching practices by sharing their ideas, challenges and ways ahead. The diversity of the panel involves early career scholars marginalised in different ways teaching in the UK Universities with different backgrounds including nationalities, stories and perspectives to see the world.

Whose Nuclear Governance? New(er) Trends of Interpretive Scholarship in Understanding Nuclear Governance I (Structural Approaches) (Global Nuclear Order Working Group) Room: Room 105, Library Bringing together different interpretive approaches to global nuclear governance, this panel highlights the importance of knowledge, discourse, and meaning for understanding contemporary nuclear politics. To what extent should interpreting nuclear orders focus, for instance, on normative or emotive abstractions, shared beliefs, ideas, or identities? When studying nuclear orders, what are the underlying ontological, epistemic, or methodological assumptions? How important are discursive and material structures of power and hierarchy in global nuclear governance, and what is the role of agency and resistance? How can we interpret the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in international nuclear politics? Whose discourses of peaceful nuclear orders matter, and why?

Borders, boundaries, frontiers, and borderlands of South East Europe: Enacting, engaging and performing. (South East Europe Working Group) Room: Exec 1, ICC This panel takes questions of borders and bordering seriously, to examine how different enactments of border policies are implemented, responded to and challenged as people cross borders, enact solidarity and build new lives in different communities. It draws on a range of examples from communities across South East Europe who come into contact with different levels and enactments of borders, boundaries and frontiers. Rather than only exploring borders and boundaries from above, looking at their significance in maintaining the state system, this panel engages also with a bottom-up perspective that recognises the different ways in which borders and boundaries intersect and influence the lives of people interacting with them. The panel focuses on the multitude of different experiences and insights within these spaces, ranging from solidarity, exclusion, unity and inequality. We seek to explore those insights and how they link back to the international system, especially in how they challenge the contemporary system of governance. Moreover, we seek to explore how these encounters can inform future perspectives and developments that the international systems urgently requires.

Colonialism and the Reproduction of Agrarian Labour (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Exec 9, ICC This panel considers the classed, gendered and raced reproduction of agrarian labour in light of recent IPE scholarship on the colonial logics and legacies of global capitalism. It builds on a workshop on the same theme held at Warwick in May 2023 as the panellists look to submit a special issue.

Critical spaces: engaging with Queer, feminist and postcolonial IR (Gendering International Relations Working Group) Room: Room 101, Library An increasing number of scholars reject the epistemic and ontological foundations of orthodox IR, and, in so doing asking for epistemic and ontological plurality in a fashion sensitive to queer, postcolonial and feminist insights and knowledges. There is also emphasis on studying the everydayness of IR through an intersectional lens. This panel brings together a range of papers dedicated to such plurality, offering insigh

Developing a British Kashmiri Studies (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Boardroom, The Exchange Migration from Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK or Azad Kashmir for short) to Britain commenced during the colonial period, however it was not until the 1950s that larger waves of migration from the disputed territory began to take place. Today it is estimated the diaspora form half of all British Muslims, and one of the largest non-European origin communities in the UK. Yet very little is known about the socio-economic, political, and ethno-linguistic nuances outside of the community itself; and although a growing number of scholars, activists, and writers continue to emerge from the British Kashmiri community, their work remains at the periphery when discussing minorities in the UK. Therefore, what is unique about this community is that, although it forms a large share of the ethnic minority population in Britain, it remains ‘hidden’. This is largely a result of coming from an internationally disputed territory (Jammu and Kashmir) and being amalgamated with Pakistanis, by British officialdom, upon settlement in the UK. However, as grassroots identity movements continue to demonstrate, a significant number of those from the community (in the homeland and diaspora) believe this masks both internal nuances, but also has a detrimental impact on the lived experiences of the community for representation and policy provision. Although many pioneers from South Asia who participated in political activism and trade unions, were from Azad Kashmir, there is evidence of discrimination by other South Asian heritage groups within a British context. This often involves negative stereotyping and degradation of language and culture, as well as access to political platforms as ‘Kashmiris’. Yet issues of identity and recognition as a result of originating from an internationally disputed territory continue to play out, both decades on and thousands of miles away. BISA provides an excellent platform for a roundtable discussion on ‘Developing a British Kashmiri Studies’, given Birmingham is home to the largest diaspora from Azad Kashmir and the city was part of key developments in terms of maintaining transnational links, including the creation of the historically significant Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). The contribution of British Kashmiris to both the city and the UK as a whole is seldom acknowledged and all but absent in terms of academic study on minorities, despite this presence. In recognition of a lacuna of voices from this diaspora within public platforms of this nature, the roundtable is formed entirely of British Kashmiri heritage scholars and writers, comprising of: Associate Professor Serena Hussain (Coventry University), author of ‘Society and Politics of Jammu and Kashmir’; Professor Zafar Khan one of the first British Kashmiri academics and an active senior member of the JKLF; Professor Tahir Abbas a Professor of International Relations (Leiden University); Shams Rehman, a journalist and founder of the online news platform Jammu Kashmir TV; Dr Karamat Iqbal, an expert in minorities in education; and early career researcher, Awais Hussain (University of York) a social historian and linguist specialising in migration from Azad Kashmir to the UK. The roundtable Chair, Dr Yasmin Farooq, is an expert on the experiences of ethnic minorities within the NHS and a former Magistrate.

Ethics and World Politics: the Anthropocene, Mobilities and Neocolonialism (Ethics and World Politics Working Group) Room: Exec 10, ICC This panel addresses urgent ethical questions in a world shaped by environmental destruction, human and more than human mobilities and the enduring presence of colonialism. In this context, papers address feminist eco-pacifist praxes, death in the refugee crisis, degrowth, neocolonialism in international rights law and demographic change and existential risks.

Evaluating the Intellectual Project of Critical Military Studies: its First Decade in Review (Critical Military Studies Working Group) Room: Soprano, Hyatt First published during 2015, the journal Critical Military Studies is a scholarly outlet documenting research focusing on the critical complexities of military institutions, including - but not limited to - their imperatives, practices, personnel, and the blurring of such through various influences taking place in quotidian settings and beyond. Against this backdrop, its overarching aim has been to ‘challenge military power.’ Although research of this nature had been underway in earnest decades prior to its publication, the journal has become a key point of reference for previously disparate interdisciplinary scholarship, critically discussing military-related issues. Since the journal’s publication, the acronym ‘CMS’ now has an established place in the academic lexicon, providing scholars engaged in critical debates regarding military issues with a shorthand to describe the tenor of their work, determine intellectual and methodological positions, create networks, and instruct their students. Yet, despite the critical intentions of such activity since 2015, rather less time has been spent articulating the meaning of ‘criticality’ in relation to the intellectual project of CMS, and, by association, assessing if the foundational brief of this aspect of academia has been successfully pursued to-date. Given that we are approaching the tenth year of its publication, this panel is part of an attempt to open the floor to such discussions in order that we might take stock of ‘critical military studies’, as a publication, a community of practice, and an intellectual project.

Exhibition Hall Open Room: Hyatt

Foreign Fighters: Returnees, Repatriation and Recidivism (Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism) Room: Fortissimo, Hyatt This panel brings together scholars working on foreign fighters. Even though transnational activism has been recognised as an important feature of the international system, questions about mobilisation, a focus on comparative studies, and well-trodden examples still dominate debates about foreign fighters in IR. Instead, the panel will examine often neglected cases and themes, such as analysis of returnees and repatriation. In this way, the panel will contribute to theoretical and empirical research on transnational activism, foreign fighters, returnees, and armed non-state actors.

Grant Culture, Impact, and Critical Scholarship (Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group) Room: Dolce, Hyatt This roundtable will look at the challenges of conducting critical research within a neoliberal higher education system that measures success in terms of grant capture and ‘impact’. Over the past few years, conversations within Critical Terrorism Studies scholarship have focused on the need to engage with policymakers but is this the only way to create ‘impact’. Does this emphasis on ‘impact’ compromise the emancipatory principles of critical research? And how does this translate into grant capture strategies, is it possible to win grant funding without engaging with policymakers? Can impact be directed in the opposite direction, towards grassroots advocacy organisations? Is it possible to do impact without contributing to violent government policies? We will explore these questions with academics who have received funding from different sources and conducted critical research.

Great Powers, Rising Powers and Deterrence (War Studies Working Group) Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange Great Powers, Rising Powers and Deterrence

Militaristic Popular Culture – keeping apace in a war economy? (Orphan Papers track) Room: Concerto, Hyatt In the period since the 9/11 wars, popular culture initially (at least) became a form and site which was frequently implicated in mobilising support for war and its violence. This panel explores the ways in which popular culture in its many manifestations has multiplied and intensified war messaging but has also opened up surprising spaces and cracks of resistance. These fascinating papers explore the dominance of war and militarism in toys and the way in which practices of play make militarism banal and part of the everyday; the messages in films and their failure to amount effective critique of the 9/11 wars; the ways in which popular culture narratives are internalised and reproduced by elite level decision makers, and the ways in which graphic novels offer spaces to explore an ‘imagined’ civil war in the USA so offering a space for critique. Cumulatively in their exploration of the multifaceted ways in which popular culture engages, internalises, and problematises militarism, these papers open up a crucial lens into militarism as global crises in a period of ever intensifying conflict.

One Destination, Many Roads: Distrust-Reduction, Hope, and Trust Building in Conflict Resolution (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Drawing Room, Hyatt In an interconnected world where states cannot avoid intense interaction, trust is crucial for conflict management in International Studies. However, is trust essential for conflict resolution? This panel aims to reexamine whether and how trust works as a critical precondition for peacebuilding. First, the panel will discuss whether perceptions of trustworthiness can be transferred from individuals to state leaders to allow for pre-negotiations to begin and whether some peace agreements can be reached without some degree of mutual trust. It also examines if hope can replace trust as a mechanism through which actors respond with conciliatory gestures to defection from the adversarial state. While much has been written on trust-building, a prior phase of distrust-reduction may be needed to allow actors to transition from complete distrust to shared appreciation of vulnerability, by engaging in an empathic dialogue. Additionally, this panel includes more empirical papers in a specific context examining how to build trust between two individuals not in interpersonal interaction and how the interpersonal trust between two state leaders can be institutionalised and preserved for the future. Finally, scholars on this panel come from a range of career stages and institutions, utilising different methodologies and case studies, including Northern Ireland, US-Russia, Israel-Palestine, and Inter-Korea relations, yet also seek to address issues around distrust and trust in conflict management and resolution.

Pedagogies of the everyday in International Studies (Learning and Teaching Working Group) Room: Room 102, Library In recent years, International Studies as a discipline has been enriched by its on-going engagement with the ‘everyday’ – providing an alternative lens through which to examine global relations of power, security and political economy. In this roundtable discussion, we consider how encounters with the everyday can reshape teaching practices and what it means to bring ‘the everyday’ into the International Studies classroom. This session will include discussions of specific projects and pedagogical approaches that get students to engage with the everyday as an important site of global politics – for example by encouraging students to investigate the local-global politics of frequently used mundane objects, to rethink family stories in light of global political dynamics, or to engage in learning activities that motivate them to see how global power relations and hierarchies shape their own and others’ everyday lives. This will be a wide-ranging discussion with input from scholars teaching across the discipline of International Studies (security studies, critical military studies, IPE, European Studies etc).

Sites and bodies of violence (Critical Military Studies Working Group) Room: Dhani Prem, The Exchange How does military violence play out through different sites and bodies?

Transatlantic Relations: the US, the EU, the UK and NATO (European Security Working Group) Room: Room 103, Library Transatlantic Relations: the US, the EU and the UK

Turkey’s Tightrope: Navigating Domestic and International Crosswinds (International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group) Room: Room 105, Library A Century after the foundation of the Turkish Republic, many questions remain open and revolve around Turkey’s role from many points of view. The last decades' rapid, ever-changing global order overlapped with drastic reforms in Turkey’s domestic context. Thus, considering the numerous scenarios where Turkey plays a significant role, the objective of this panel is to discuss the various elements composing this puzzle and the mechanisms at play at different levels, from high and power politics to emotions and ideologies, from state institutions to grassroots subtleties. For instance, looking at the international dimension, R. Gasco’s research aims to understand the pendulum in Turkey's foreign policy behaviour between NATO and Russia in the last decade. Bridging variation of the external front with internal decision-making dynamics is the objective of S. Abrami’s historical-political account. The relationship between domestic politics, institutions, and public sentiment is the scope of M. Kucukuzun's analysis of the 2023 Turkish presidential election campaigns on Twitter. K. Tuncel offers an ethnographic case study on negotiations of gender Normativity in Turkey’s Everyday Life. Although each of the papers presents its own analytical and methodological approach to specific themes and research questions, the objective of gathering early career scholars from various fields is to “catch the wave” of transdisciplinarity to not only produce a comprehensive assessment of Turkey’s sociopolitical dynamics but also to provide new original and complementary tools of investigation that allow to avoid reductionist interpretation of such a peculiar country in a peculiar region as the Wider Mediterranean.

US Foreign Policy and the Indo-Pacific (US Foreign Policy Working Group) Room: Stuart Hall, The Exchange n/a

Ukrainian identity, regional diversity and wartime unity (Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group) Room: Sonata, Hyatt This round table will cover a range of issues about Ukraine’s identity, responses to the full scale invasion, human rights, unity and challenges during the war time, etc. It consists of researchers of different levels ranging from MA graduates to Professor whose research foci lie in regional and national identities, narratives and post-Soviet studies. Another distinguishing characteristic of this roundtable is that is consists of Ukrainians coming from different parts of Ukraine and thus can provide a more diverse and cohesive picture of the complexed Ukraine’s identity. The round table is chaired by Dr Natasha Kuhrt.

Who thinks of everything? Reckoning with the value of racialised epistemologies in IR (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Justham, Symphony Hall Who tends to think of everything in two or more ways simultaneously? Who is a postmodernist virtually as a condition of his or her being? – Richard Delgado, Racial Realism – after we are gone Recent publications such as Zvobgo et al.’s ‘ (2023) Race and Racial Exclusion in Security Studies’ and Doharty et al.’s (2021) ‘The University went to ‘decolonise’ and all they brought back was lousy diversity double-speak!’ bring back the importance of the issue that is the structural violence towards scholars of colour who choose to uphold the legitimacy of alternative knowledge as part of the decolonising movement. This roundtable is on this topic of racialised epistemology and its value in showing IR a perspective advantage. Quoting pedagogical theorist Ladson-Billings (2000:262): this advantage speaks to the ways that not being positioned in the white centre allows scholars of colour a “wide-angle vision” that enables them to see better and transcend the normative thought boundaries that come with existing on the inside. In recent years, attention to debates over racialised knowledge and in particular the role of a solidarity in anti-racist consciousness has intensified amidst discussions of what decolonising International Relations (IR) means for the academy. While the focus of decolonising IR for many has popularised an academia focused on the topic of contextualising political knowledge within the colonial and imperial backdrops that form their foundation, there is an important continued concern within re-aligning the decolonising effort back to addressing the structural issues of the racist circumstances of POC academics persisting within the colonial and imperial environment of the professoriate. Participants in this roundtable will engage in this critical discussion of the importance of upholding racialised discourses in challenging an IR that continues to dehumanise and depersonalise its interlocutors.

Anticipating the Future of War: AI, Automated Systems, and Resort-to-Force Decision Making (Ethics and World Politics Working Group) Room: Jane How, Symphony Hall The use of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and automated systems has already changed the nature of the battlefield. The further diffusion of AI-enabled systems into states’ resort-to-force decision making is unavoidable. While this contribution is currently limited and indirect, trends in other realms suggest that the use of AI-driven systems will increase in this high-stakes area. This panel will analyse AI-enabled systems that could be used either to inform states’ decision making on the resort to force or, in some contexts – such as responding to nuclear threats – to make and directly implement decisions on the resort to force. In the former case, human decision makers draw on algorithmic recommendations and predictions to reach decisions on whether to resort to force; in the latter case, decisions are reached and action taken with or without human oversight. Both raise a host of urgent questions. The five papers that will contribute to this panel will address the ethical, political, and geo-political implications of intelligent machines being brought into the decision to wage war and interrogate how these future-focused, but foreseeable, developments challenge existing rules and norms.

China and India in the (Post-)Colonial Entanglements (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Exec 1, ICC The four papers in this panel present a balance of looking back to the colonial history and looking into the decolonial/postcolonial present. They explore the micro-foundations of the non-White, non-Western Self’s contestations of colonial and postcolonial positionality within the international order, as well as the micro-dynamics of the decolonialisation moment. Hao’s paper takes a historical approach to analyse the details of the decolonial moment of Hong Kong, pondering upon the salient decisions of the British government in its 1983-1984 negotiations with the People’s Republic of China during the handover. It uncovers the micro-foundations of decolonialisation process with its rich historical materials and innovative theoretical approach. Inspired by the English School approach, Hsu’s paper uncovers Republican China in the liminal space between empire and nation-state in the colonial contexts of the early 20th century. Zooming in on Republican China’s public health governance and contestation of the defining elements within the “standard of the civilisation” to negotiate its sovereignty and status, Hsu challenges the notion of state formation as a unilinear, teleological process. Tang’s paper touches upon the postcolonial entanglements, analysing the ways in which the colonial discourses of Orientalism shape the present-day India’s search for and construction of the national Self. Diving into the post-1990 diplomatic elites’ practices around the India International Science Festival, Tang’s paper speaks for the agency of postcolonial states in negotiating their own status and positionality within the international order. Han’s paper interrogates the “critical White-centrism” among postcolonial IR critiques by exploring how Chinese quasi-officials in the 21st century record their professional duty in Africa and how they racialize Africa, the West, whereby negotiating their own racial identities therein. Drawing from but moving beyond the racial triangulation framework, it argues for the central analytical power of a deeply entrenched desire for modernity that fundamentally informs the racialized language that Chinese agents adopt to hierarchize the Chinese Self, the Western Other, and the African Other. Han thus how uncovers postcolonial agents may wield their agency to recreate a self-centric version of the global racial hierarchy.

Democracy, Displacement and Diaspora in West Africa (Africa and International Studies Working Group) Room: Exec 9, ICC This panel amplifies often unheard voices from West Africa. It tries to elucidate Nigerians 'vernacular' conceptions of counter-terrorism operations against Boko Haram, and to understand what might lie behind the recent wave of military coups in the region. Other papers account for the muted voices of internally displaced (Nigerian) women in international studies, and connect the establishment of a liberalized global tomato agri–food sector with the emergence of international farm labour migrants originating from rural Middle Belt Ghana and employed in rural Southern Italy.

Does the Method Fit? Exploring Diverse Methodologies of Research in South East Europe (South East Europe Working Group) Room: Boardroom, The Exchange Much has been said and written about the challenges hegemonic theoretical frameworks face when applied in ‘non-Western’ contexts. However, not much attention has been paid to the challenges hegemonic methodologies and methods encounter. This roundtable brings together a diverse group of emerging and advanced scholars of international relations whose ‘(non-)traditional’ research methodologies aim to unearth the ‘worlding’ potential of Southeast Europe. Ethnographic research on war tourism, poetry as an exploratory method, uncovering peace-seeking from below through interviews, and bottom-up (critical) discourse approaches to identity and memory building are just some of the ‘(non-)traditional’ methodologies and methods of international relations assembled under this roundtables’s auspices. Most of them were chosen to counter the hegemonic narratives and the top-down research practices that prevent a more comprehensive knowledge production of the region. However, are these methods and methodologies the perfect fit for Southeast Europe? This is the main question we want to address and discuss in our roundtable and therefore we invite papers tackling similar themes in a multitude of different methods to explore what method may and may not do for research in Southeast Europe.

Indo-Pacific Diplomacy: Challanges and Opportunities (International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group) Room: Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange This panel elaborates on the foreign policy dimensions in the extended Indo-Pacific region to delve into the challenges and opportunities posed by the diplomatic actions.

Legacies of Rebellion: Wartime Dynamics and Postwar Political Consequences (Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism) Room: Exec 10, ICC Recent civil war scholarship has investigated the military and non-military behaviors of rebel groups to better understand variations in the relations between insurgents, civilians, state actors, and foreign sponsors across conflicts. However, less attention has been given to the long-term consequences of rebel wartime practices. This panel brings under scrutiny the actions and strategies of rebels during war, as well as their adaptation to the strategies of their opponents, in order to understand how rebel wartime behaviors shape postwar societies. Tackling one key aspect of warfare, Martin discusses how wartime recruitment influences post-conflict citizen-state relationships. Sintre investigates whether rebel governance practices affect the postwar governance behaviors of former rebels. Devereaux Evans shows how rebels seek to shift local gender norms to destabilize their local adversaries, a strategy with pervasive consequences on postwar societies. Shifting the focus on counterinsurgency, Waterman explores how rebel organizations react to state strategies and the long-term effects of factors of cohesion or fragmentation. Engaging as well with the concept of counterinsurgency, Bouemar seeks to understand how rebels transform as military organizations during war and how this process influences the type of armed forces that emerge after rebel victory.

Mothering, Motherhood and (Feminist) International Relations 2.0: An open roundtable conversation (Gendering International Relations Working Group) Room: Fortissimo, Hyatt This "open roundtable" continues the conversation begun at BISA 2023. Last year's roundtable focused on our personal experience of mothering and motherhood in a discipline and an HE sector often hostile to it. The attendance numbers, feedback received, and affective encounters experienced made it clear that there was a pressing need to create spaces where conversations about the intersection between our "home lives" and our "work lives" can be had. Rather than submit a full roundtable, this year we want to facilitate a generous and supportive conversation between ourselves as students, teachers, colleagues, and leaders in IR. We intend this roundtable to be a space where we can share our diverse experiences of the joys and pleasures – as well as the grief and frustrations – of motherhood, parenting, and caring. We welcome gentle, yet honest conversations about pregnancy and pregnancy loss, infertility and the inability to have children due to systemic barriers and institutionalised exclusions, mothering, parenting, IVF, adoption, fostering, step-parenting, co-parenting, queer families, and raising children with a variety of needs, as well as care and caring practices outside that for children. Prompted by Cynthia Enloe’s call to explore how “the personal is international” and Sara Motta’s to co-create “a politics (m)otherwise” through “care-full pedagogies” and practices that make space for (pluri)diverse, intersectional ways of being-knowing-doing the international, we ask participants to reflect on and, for our panel, to respond to the following: • How do our caring experiences frame the way we interact with international relations? • How do our caring experiences impact on how we teach, research, mentor, and lead IR? • What are the international dimensions of our own experiences of the blurring of “home” and “work” life? • How can IR better care for those who call it their disciplinary home? • What home(s) can we (un)make in IR to enable us to nurture and sustain alternative ways of being and working in, against, and outside the discipline and academy itself?

New actors, spaces and methods of activism in world politics (Non-Governmental Organisations Working Group) Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange While the study of NGOs, civil society and transnational activism has become an established area of research in international relations, there is significant scope for interrogation of new actors, spaces, and methods in this field, and how they reshape our understanding of the international. This panel brings together insights from diverse contexts through focused case studies including the pursuit of justice for marginalised groups in Lebanon and Sri Lanka, practices of arts and performance in queer activism in Bangladesh, the transnational links of the Milk Tea Alliance in East and Southeast Asia, and the international implications of local community actors in Southern Transylvania.

Peace on Display: The Arts and Aesthetics of Peacebuilding (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Dolce, Hyatt How do representations of and for peace shape our knowledge and practice of peacebuilding? Following the aesthetic turn in International Relations, there has been increasing interest at the intersections of peacebuilding and the arts. In this context, scholars have interrogated the possibilities of a peace aesthetics: one that is able to represent, shape and form, and crucially, expand what is thought, said and felt about peace and peacebuilding (Möller 2019). Moving from this, scholars have explored the ways that the arts contribute to alternative forms of socio-political commentary and space creation within conflict-affected spaces. Engaging across a number of globally-situated sites of peace and conflict knowledge, this panel will examine the aesthetics of peace, peace-making and peacebuilding through exhibitions, festivals, walls, and in digital spaces. In this context, we ask whose peace is on display? What are the various strategies of representation? Which actors are represented or excluded? How might we study an aesthetics of peace? Why is peace is put on display, and to what effect?

Post-Brexit U.K. foreign policy, and “Global Britain” (Foreign Policy Working Group) Room: Room 101, Library A group of papers that look at various aspects of Britain's foreign policy in the post-Brexit era.

Power & Governance in Digital Global Politics (International Studies and Emerging Technologies Working Group) Room: Concerto, Hyatt This panel explores processes of norm formation, policy creation and governance in response to new possibilities in cyber tech. Governing the digital realm has become an increasingly central task for states and international institutions, and threats propagate and evolve rapidly. These papers consider how leading digital frontier states like China and the UK understand possibilities for governance, influence and the wielding of power.

Space Strategy, Surveillance, and Threats (Astropolitics Working Group) Room: Dhani Prem, The Exchange This panel brings together new research on the military dimensions of outer space, in particular on the contemporary strategies of anti-satelliteweapons, the use of commercial space systems in military campaigns such as in Ukraine, histories of military space surveillance, and challenging perceptions of threats in space.

State-Formation, Colonisation, World Orders (Historical Sociology and International Relations Working Group) Room: Room 102, Library These papers investigate the rise of modern politics by looking at processes of colonisation and state-formation.

Teaching and Learning in International Studies (Learning and Teaching Working Group) Room: Drawing Room, Hyatt This panel explores and reflects on the experience of teaching and learning in International Relations. The panel brings together a range of different voices, studies, reflexive encounters, and debates that shape our vocation as educators in an academic field characterised by topics of deep ethical concern.

The role of institutional actors towards refugee policies (International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group) Room: Stuart Hall, The Exchange This panel brings together papers that focus on the role of institutions on global, regional and country specific governance of migrants and refugees. It addresses WHO’s position towards refugee women, and their access to healthcare facilities, it questions the position of governments and their policy proposals within the UN regarding refugee flows, it unpacks the role of the Arab League in Syrian refugee repatriation and looks into the transformation of global refugee governance through transorganisational partnerships.

Thinking the Future of War: Epistemology, Innovation, and Revolutions (War Studies Working Group) Room: Room 103, Library Military organization and warfare is all about preparing for, and shaping the future. Where the “Revolution in Military Affairs” of the 1990s suggested a radical change in the character (or even, for some, the nature) of war, the present of warfare has tended to get crowded out by expected coming military transformations. In what Marijn Hoijtink termed “prototype warfare”, radical military innovation has become the very character of war, as warfare becomes a catalyst and testing ground for innovation. Conflicts such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Nagorno-Karabakh war are heralded as pointing to the dawn of new warfare, and as military organisations develop “Futures commands” and “next generation” or “future” combat air systems, scholars simultaneously point to a return to the past. For Patrick Porter, futurity might mask enduring trends, while Chiara Libiseller, Vladimir Rauta and others have analysed new concepts as “trends”, “buzzwords”, or “fads”. This panel, therefore, interrogates how military organisations think about, organize for, and represent the future of war. What knowledge serves the production of future war, and what relations exist between past experience, social change, and imagined military futures? The four contributions of this panel address different perceptions of future warfare and examine how those futures come to be, and how predictions concerning future war shape present military activity.

Unseeing Genocide: Academic Responsibilities and Complicities (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Justham, Symphony Hall What, as academics, do we see, and what do we choose to 'unsee'? Who can choose to 'unsee' a genocide unfolding, and who cannot? How does unseeing, and its companion, silence, implicate us in war-crimes and atrocities that are happening far away? Does choosing to see and 'speak up' about genocide blur the supposed boundaries of an intellectual life and 'activism'? Are there exceptional times when that supposed boundary must be crossed, out of moral and indeed academic responsibility? Or is the boundary a false one anyway? The disparity in academic responses to catastrophic world events that shake the edifice of International Relations exposes a) the divergence in motives that drive people to enter academia in the first place; b) the divergence in political strategies; and c) the unevenness in career implications. But, as this roundtable considers in light of events in Gaza, such disparity is not without consequence - silences, pretences of innocence, contrived aloofness, juxtaposed with speaking up, affects academia, affects discourse, and affects politics.

Wars on terror (Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group) Room: Room 105, Library This panel brings together papers that investigate the different yet connected ways in which states are enacting their own 'wars on terror'.

Whose news, whose history? Critically interrogating media, information and international relations (Foreign Policy Working Group) Room: Exec 5, ICC In contemporary international relations, perceptions of the facts are arguably as important as the facts themselves. In such an environment, state and non-state actors alike expend considerable efforts on moulding these perceptions to their advantage. The ways they do this, however, are often indirect or mediated by other objectives, processes, institutions or contextual factors. With a particular eye to this contingent dimension, this panel is dedicated to critically interrogating whose perspectives make it through into the news or into discussions of politics and history, and the security and governance implications that this has. It interrogates a range of contingences (including journalists’ unwitting complicity, policymakers’ domestic motivations and religious organisations’ self-legitimation) that together shape whose perspectives on news and history predominate in a given instance. In so doing, it presents a more nuanced picture of the web of actors and interests capable of threatening - or defending - liberal models.

Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group AGM Room: Stuart Hall, The Exchange

European Security Working Group AGM Room: Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange

Interpretivism in International Relations Working Group AGM Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange

South East Europe Working Group AGM Room: Dhani Prem, The Exchange

Culture wars and international relations: Contesting moral authority in global order (Post-Structural Politics Working Group) Room: Concerto, Hyatt There has been a global resurgence in “culture war” discourses, in which conflicts over values are increasingly explained through the frameworks of the alt-right, the “war on woke”, and the denunciation of intellectual traditions such as critical race theory, decolonial scholarship, and postmodernism. Furthermore, these contests are frequently taking place internationally, transnationally, and globally, albeit unevenly and in hybrid forms, inviting us to consider how these contests for moral authority are scaling up towards global order. This panel proposes a research agenda on the international dimensions of “culture wars”. In a series of initial explorations, the contributions examine questions such as the global politics of memetic faces; the “culture war” framing of international migration; and the representations of “the West” and “Western civilization” in Anglophone and Chinese reactionary discourses.

Diasporas’ mobilisation, political participation and activism (International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group) Room: Drawing Room, Hyatt This panel focusses on the mobilisation, political participation and activism of diasporic populations. Specifically, on the Greek diaspora and its transformed interaction with the homeland, Jewish diasporist activism and political agency, Turkish voting behaviour home and abroad (specifically in the UK), and Armenian and Azerbaijani diaspora mobilisation on the narration of Karabakh war in the social media.

Emerging Patterns in Digital Norms and Culture (International Studies and Emerging Technologies Working Group) Room: Dolce, Hyatt This panel explores how states, communities and international institutions produce, and respond to, changes in digital culture. Risks and opportunities associated with popular forms of entertainment are considered alongside state and international institutional responses to new digital possibilities for social/political organisation and norm formation. The papers cover areas that affect a diverse range of geographic areas, but all with the common aim of understanding the implications of new technologies on populations.

Emotions and collective identification (Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group) Room: Dhani Prem, The Exchange Emotions and collective identification

International politics of African statebuilding (Africa and International Studies Working Group) Room: Exec 5, ICC This panel examines a variety of more-or-less internationalised statebuilding trajectories from across the African continent. They examine the consequences of armed rebellion for ex-liberation movements turned-governments in the Horn of Africa, the consequences of decolonisation for insecurity in Lusophone Africa, the relationship between counter-terrorism and stability in Somaliland, collapsing confidence in Nigerian democracy, and ways in which development interventions outside state structures have empowered rural elites against the central state in Ethiopia.

Media Discourses on Security and Threat (Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group) Room: Room 101, Library This panel brings together papers that examine the representation of 'threat', 'terrorism' and 'extremism' within media discourses.

Negotiating and renegotiating political worlds (Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working Group) Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange Negotiating and renegotiating political worlds

Never Again? Unpacking the German Discourse on Palestine (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Justham, Symphony Hall In the wake of the 2023 genocide in Gaza, compulsory Zionism, to use Umayyah Cable's terms, has reached authoritarian proportions throughout the country. Antisemitism is primarily construed of as a problem imported through non-European migrants, and anti-Zionist Jews are persona non grata in most German institutions. Whilst all western countries are experiencing a form of censorship around Palestine speech, in Germany this has reached unparalleled proportions and uncondiitonal support for Israel is a staple of *both* the German left and the German right. What is happening? Is there a future for an anti-Zionist left in Germany? Is there a future for a diverse Jewish community in Germany that is allowed to hold different opinions on Israel? Ought scholars outside Germany boycott German academia in solidarity with Palestine? What can the German case tell us about Israel, Palestine, and questions around solidarity more generally? This roundtable will gather a group of experts on Germany and its relationship to both its Nazi past and to the State of Israel in order to look at this question, and unpack the contemporary German discourse on Palestine.

New directions for the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda. (Gendering International Relations Working Group) Room: Soprano, Hyatt The Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda has been innovative since the transnational feminist movement pushed for the creation of UNSCR 1325 in 2000, where it was heralded as a potentially radical intervention into global governance (Cohn et al 2004). Nearly a quarter-century on, UNSCR 1325, along with a further 9 related Security Council Resolutions forming a WPS agenda, continue to shape how we frame and respond to gender considerations within international peace and security institutions, the military, conflict affected areas, and peacekeeping and peacebuilding contexts. This panel draws our attention to new directions for WPS, both in terms of what is considered in the scope of WPS and innovative ways of using WPS to ensure more effective gender consideration. Papers prompt the study of new research areas such as digitalization and bodily fluids and their conceptualisation in the context of WPS. Other papers explore new ways of including women in peace and reconciliation processes and institutional strategies, drawing on experiences in Afghanistan and NATO. Taken together, all the papers highlight the ability of the WPS agenda to evolve and respond to the contemporary needs of women in international peace and security.

Pedagogical Approaches to Global Health (Learning and Teaching Working Group) Room: Exec 6, ICC The COVID-19 pandemic created a surge of interest in students on issues at the nexus of health and international studies. This surge created a significant challenge for faculty members in terms of how to teach global health topics to students who may or may not have a formal background in the area but whose personal experiences had exposed them to the lived realities of global health. A challenge that continues as new students enroll in our programs from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. In addressing this challenge, students need to be given access to ideas and materials that assists their learning relative to their understanding of the topics. In turn, faculty members need to develop and successfully deploy teaching strategies that engages highly learning-diverse student populations. This roundtable brings together an international set of teachers from the UK, Europe, and Asia; all of whom are active in teaching global health courses in international studies programmes. The roundtable discussion will focus on the creation and implementation of innovative teaching methodologies in our courses. Although these methodologies will focus on global health topics, the underlying pedagogical approaches and innovations will be of interest to colleagues in other fields of international studies.

Professional Military Education in the United Kingdom (War Studies Working Group) Room: Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange The current state of Professional Military Education in the United Kingdom is one of silos separating the different branches and their various academic partners. This is the case even though all of these institutions and the personnel who pass through them must go on to collectively contribute to national security and service in the British Armed Forces. Currently, each of the different Defence Colleges operates in isolation with their own approaches even though they all operate under the same diminishing defence budgets and source their students from the same populations. This panel aims to demonstrate the current state of PME in the UK, how the different colleges address shared issues and where possible how they deal with emergent problems within a changing defence environment.

Publishing as a PhD Scholar: Dos and Don'ts (Review of International Studies) Room: Jane How, Symphony Hall Publishing as a PhD Scholar: Dos and Don'ts

Regional cooperation and shifting power dynamics in Eurasia (Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group) Room: Room 102, Library This panel will present on regional cooperation and shifting power dynamics in Eurasia

Relational Approaches to Civil War: From Inter-Rebel Cooperation to Ex-Combatant Reintegration (Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism) Room: Stuart Hall, The Exchange This is a panel of the Centre for the Comparative Study of Civil War hosted at the University of York. It explores cutting-edge research on the dynamics of civil war, from diverse relationships between rebel groups, to international engagement with these groups, and transformations of political orders after war that highlight issues of power sharing and reintegration of armed actors. The papers by the Fellows of the Centre and their collaborators apply relational approaches to examine these dynamics in a range of contexts. Regine Schwab considers dynamic interactions between multiple rebel groups to understand different forms of cooperation and conflict between these actors. Edoardo Corradi zooms into a particular form of inter-rebel relationships—alliances—and examines the effects of rebel groups’ political and instrumental goals on the durability of rebel alliances. Tom Buitelaar shifts attention to rebel groups’ broader environment in an analysis of the impact of international labelling of rebel groups on United Nations peacekeepers’ approaches to these groups. Victor Bouemar, Romain Malejacq and Kai Thaler show that prewar and wartime legacies shape the use of state power after rebel victory. Finally, Pauline Zerla asks how ordinary people navigate war legacies with a focus on the relationships between ex-combatants and communities. Combined, these papers advance a relational understanding of civil war as a process that evolves through interactions between nonstate, state, civilian and external actors involved.

Rethinking stabilisation and responding to transnational threats (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Room 103, Library Within policy circles, the conduct of stabilisation is evolving in light of Western withdrawal from and reflection on Afghanistan, as well as evolving dynamics surrounding the war in Ukraine. Geopolitical competition and polarisation are deepening, and there have been significant changes in the nature of violent conflict, along with a greater willingness of some global and regional powers to use military force to further their political interests. Western governments have long been working to stem threats from serious organised crime, terrorism, corruption, illicit finance, drugs trafficking and war economies as part of efforts to promote stability overseas and strengthen their own national security. Recently, however, a primary focus on insurgency, terrorism and violent extremism in stabilisation operations may be giving way to questions over how to respond to illicit finance, corruption, organised crime and disinformation, and their effects on stability in contexts where violence is increasing below the threshold of war. How potential responses to this wider range of transnational threats in stabilisation might contribute to reducing violence, (restoration of) security and peaceful political deal-making is not yet well understood. This roundtable offers an opportunity for exploring key issues under consideration within the policy and research communities working on stabilisation and related themes, in particular in relation to 'transnational threats' - with speakers and participants from policy, practice and research backgrounds with experience and expertise in a diverse range of geographic contexts as well as across a number of threat types. Key questions for panellists will include: - How are 'transnational threats' evolving in relevant contexts today? - What risks do these pose for stability, national security, human security and human rights? - How are different actors working to address instability challenges related to transnational threats? - What are we learning about their successes and failures? - How can tackling transnational threats contribute to peaceful political deal-making? - How can we better understand the costs associated with trying to tackle transnational threats in stabilisation contexts, including assessing potential tensions and trade-offs?

Status, Social Closure and Stratification in International Society (Historical Sociology and International Relations Working Group) Room: Room 105, Library Recent scholarship in IR has shown how important status and related sociological concepts are for an understanding of world politics. Aimed at advancing that research program, this panel will explore questions related to status, social closure, and stratification in international society, including: What are the principal modes of stratification in contemporary world politics? When do status politics lead to international cooperation? How do powerful states entrench their privileged position in international governance, using institutions like the Council of the League of Nations or the nonproliferation regime? Why do certain state attributes matter more than others for status recognition? How and why can status symbols be understood as performative practices? To that end, the panel will bring together scholars using diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, including neo-Weberian theories of social closure and social stratification, social identity theory, and practice and performance theories; as well as historical case studies and network analysis. Participants will discuss their contributions and reflect on how to bring the study of status, social closure and stratification to the forefront of IR.

The political economy of green energy transitions in an age of crises (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Exec 1, ICC To address the climate crisis, we need to rapidly decarbonise electricity systems and electrify energy systems. The consensus in global climate governance is that private corporations and private capital will be at the heart of this transition. Indeed, the renewable energy industry has developed rapidly over the past decade, and the development of markets for renewable power, and new ‘green’ technologies such as electric vehicles are forecast to progress rapidly over the next decade. However, the displacement of fossil fuel systems with clean energy sources lags far behind what is necessary to meet the Paris agreement. The lower profitability of clean investments compared dirty investments has tended to make them less compelling options for private investors. Now rising interest rates and inflation, as well as supply chain disruptions, have led to the devaluation of renewable energy stocks and are threatening investment in green infrastructure. How are states and corporations responding to the climate crisis pressures to promote the decarbonisation of electricity and the electrification of energy systems? What is the potential of their responses? What factors have and will limit the speed, extent and distributional politics of energy transitions in global capitalism? Engaging with these questions, the papers in this section will critically examine the global political economy of green energy transitions, and the limits of capitalist decarbonisation.

War and the Earth (Critical Military Studies Working Group) Room: Exec 9, ICC As we learn more about the ecological, climatic, and epidemiological effects of war, papers in this session will consider ways of building knowledge of war from the perspective of the Earth and the life it sustains. How does war look from the perspective of the Earth? Why build such perspectives? And how (empirically) can we do so? Contributions are thus invited that build around current work in international relations and cognate fields on, for example, the carbon costs of war logistics (Belcher et al. 2020; Crawford 2022); the toxic emissions of military disposal practices (Rubaii 2022); collaborations and tensions between conservation actors and military training grounds and bases (Ware 2022); the acceleration of mineral extraction in an era of technologically advanced weaponry (Griffiths & Rubaii, forthcoming); the long-term health effects of living in post-war landscapes for human (Griffiths 2022; Nixon 2011; Leep 2022) and non-human (Pugliese 2020) populations. Through this recent work, war appears in new spatial and temporal terms, it extends beyond the declaration of “operations” into an environmental aftermath, and often also into a “beforemath” of mining, manufacturing, and transportation.

Whose Nuclear Governance? New(er) Trends of Interpretive Scholarship in Understanding Nuclear Governance II (Agency Dimensions) (Interpretivism in International Relations Working Group) Room: Exec 10, ICC Bringing together different interpretivist approaches to global nuclear governance, this panel highlights the importance of knowledge, discourse, and meaning for understanding contemporary nuclear politics. To what extent should interpreting nuclear orders focus, for instance, on normative or emotive abstractions, shared believes, ideas, or identities? What are the underlying ontological, epistemic, or methodological assumptions when studying nuclear orders? How important are discursive and material structures of power and hierarchy in global nuclear governance, and what is the role of agency and resistance? How can we interpret dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in international nuclear politics? Whose discourses of peaceful nuclear orders matter, and why?

Contesting Empire in the Contemporary Global Order (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Room 101, Library s

Critical Studies on Terrorism Special Issue Roundtable: Abolition, Decoloniality, and Criticality: Can Critical Terrorism Studies remain “critical”? (Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group) Room: Soprano, Hyatt This roundtable brings together the co-editors and contributors of a forthcoming Special Issue in Critical Studies on Terrorism entitled Abolition, Decoloniality, and Criticality: Can Critical Terrorism Studies remain “critical”?. This special issue interrogates what it means to be ‘critical’ when we study ‘terrorism’ in the modern-colonial world. Amidst a current decolonial turn, interrogating how we study ‘terrorism’, a concept deeply embedded and entrenched in racial, gendered, and colonial structures, becomes all the more important and urgent. Whilst the field of Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) has spearheaded the critical study of terrorism, recent scholarship in both ‘critical’ as well as more orthodox approaches to ‘Terrorism Studies’ continues to perpetuate some of the same harmful biases and tropes that CTS originally sought to challenge and do away with. Discussing the challenges and possibilities of abolitionist, decolonial, and postcolonial approaches, as well as the overarching question of ‘criticality’ in CTS, the question of ‘where does CTS go next?’ is central to this project. This roundtable would bring together some of the contributors to the Special Issue who lead a major intervention in response to this central question, and to the values and priorities we believe should be at the heart of a truly ‘critical’ study of terrorism that contests global sites of power and knowledge production.

Digital Geopolitics: Rising Powers and International Institutions (International Studies and Emerging Technologies Working Group) Room: Fortissimo, Hyatt With major shifts in power balances expected as a key dynamic of the 21st Century, this panel explores what key economic sectors, policy areas and security dynamics will form central hinge points in relations. The papers consider in particular, the role that productive capacities in technology will have in determining how China’s power develops, it’s aims and objectives, as well as those of international institutions reacting to these new dynamics. They will consider just how much new interstate relations will be determined by technology, and what the present tells us about the future.

Everyday Security: Countering Radicalisation in Ordinary Spaces (Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group) Room: Dolce, Hyatt Research on everyday, vernacular, and ontological security is burgeoning in International Relations, including in studies of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism. However, these literatures have at times reduced the agency of publics, positioned as vectors through which security happens. This panel is one of two connected panels which brings together critical scholarship that is reimagining the way that Security becomes produced, re-produced and co-produced, through everyday interactions and relations. The papers within this panel explore the UK's central counter-terrorism policy apparatus, Prevent. They draw on rich, empirical data which examines how publics enact pre-crime state policy, within 'ordinary' spaces. Further, they offer critical insights into the realities of delivering counter-/de-radicalisation initiatives within multifaceted spatio-temporal contexts, revealing the multiplicity of challenges felt by those tasked with implementation. In bringing together these empirically rich studies, at the forefront of reshaping how the production of (in)Security is viewed, we reveal how everyday practices and interactions are at the heart of the possibility of transforming politics from the ground up.

Foreign Policy Analysis Challenges in South America: Links and gaps between theory and practice (Foreign Policy Working Group) Room: Boardroom, The Exchange Political dynamics in South America are complex and imply constant polarization and extreme shifts. In this context, teaching, learning, and making foreign policy decisions show the need of wider tools to address multilevel challenges. There is an increasing number of IR graduates that access leading political positions. However, there is not a strong relation between academia and governments yet, in a region where other actors such as military forces or even the private sector have more influence in foreign policy decision making. Additionally, the analytical tools themselves, being based mostly in cases from the Global North, seem far from the local reality, which make urgent the proliferation of analysis from local perspectives. This roundtable aims to discuss the situation of Foreign Policy Analysis in the region and to what extent there is a real link between theory and practice, as well as the possible ways of overcoming the existing gaps, which in turn make FPA contributions to decision making effective and relevant.

Gendered approaches to peacebuilding policy and practice (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Concerto, Hyatt Papers covering feminist and queer perspectives on a range of issues and case studies in the peacekeeping and peacebuilding field

Meet the editors - Speed networking session Room: Sonata, Hyatt

New Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century International Order (Historical Sociology and International Relations Working Group) Room: Exec 6, ICC This panel brings together scholars working on nineteenth-century international relations from the broad perspective of practice-turn and relational approaches. A common theme is the rejection of the traditional narrative about the expansion of an originally European system or society of sovereign states, which fails to comprehend the complexity of global international relations in this period. It ignores the variety of political forms; flattens or obscures structures of hierarchy; and underestimates the agency of certain actors, especially non-European ones. This narrative has already been subjected to much criticism in recent IR scholarship, which has shown that it is essential to revisit what have often been seen as the boundaries or liminal spaces of the society of states, and also that new empirical methods – such as the interpretive analysis of international practices, or the network analysis of social relations – are needed to reveal the complexity inherent here and make it intelligible. The panel explores these approaches in a variety of contexts, looking at issues like the management of public health and sanitation, sites for interaction such as international organizations, practices like colonial litigation or treaty-making, and different regional spaces including India and the Pacific Ocean.

Re-Thinking Global IR amid wars, political violence and inofficious narrative (International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group) Room: Exec 5, ICC This panel represents a combination of studies that scrutinizes the current dilemma of subjective interpretations of peace, violence and pluralism.

Reframing global political phenomenon (Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working Group) Room: Exec 10, ICC Reframing global political phenomenon

Regional governance and responsibility for refugee protection in Latin America, Africa and Europe (International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group) Room: Exec 9, ICC The current - and potential future - roles of regional organisation in relation to forced migration is an increasing important issue for the governance of the protection of transnationally displaced persons. The majority of the world’s refugee and forced migrant population remain in the regions of which their home state is seen to be a part (or close neighbour) and there have been a number of regional arrangements directed at specific refugee events as well as regionally focused conventions (Africa), declarations (Latin America) and pacts (Europe) designed to spread common norms and support cooperation and responsibility sharing within regional contexts. At the same time, general and specific regional developments have typically distinguished between (what are perceived as) intra-regional displacements (which may be envisaged as occasions of regional solidarity) and extra-regional displacements. The question of the role and future potentials of regional organisations in supporting or regulating regional responses to mass displacements in a high unequal world at the level of regions as well as states must also consider the ambivalent ways in which a regional turn may shape the governance of protection. While the topic of regionalism and responsibility for refugee protection has been addressed to some extent by legal scholarship, it remains underexplored, particularly in comparative terms, from a governance perspective and in relation to differences between intra-regional mass displacements and extra-regional mass displacement. This panel will address these issues and discuss the role regional organisations (could) play in governing forced in relation to Europe, Africa and Latin America, and modalities and mechanisms of governance deployed.

Sea change: Ocean politics, management and security (Environment Working Group) Room: Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange Sea change: Ocean politics, management and security

Securing the Institution, Securing the State: Militarised Ontological Security and Strategic Narratives (Critical Military Studies Working Group) Room: Exec 1, ICC In International Relations (IR) research, militaries continue to be viewed as the quintessential vessels of exercising state power. Waves of critical scholarship have, however, moved the focus away from mere material capabilities and realist conceptions of competition between militarised states. Drawing from psychological research on the individual’s fundamental need to “know” their place in an uncertain world, the application of ontological security in IR has illuminated how states look not just for physical security, but also ontological security, which often can come at the expense of the former. This panel argues that the military institution is used not only to secure the state physically, but also ontologically. The presenters in this panel offer varied perspectives on the roles of military institutions in this ontological security generating process, contributing to broadening the understanding of how the ontological security of the state, the military institution, and even individual soldiers, intersect. This intersection can result in the military serving to shore up state ontological security as a respected security actor on the international stage as well as explaining the adoption of hybrid warfare tactics in response to perceived threats to that same security. Most importantly, the panel shows that militaries are more than just parts of a monolithic state, be that in paradoxical reactions to diversity politics or “off record” deviations from institutional alliance narratives. Ultimately, this panel thus uses the lens of ontological security to show the military-state relationship as complex, multidirectional and fundamentally malleable, highlighting the need for academic scrutiny at all levels of the relationship.

The EU and its Southern Border: Security and Migration (European Security Working Group) Room: Dhani Prem, The Exchange Europe and Africa: Security and Migration

The Social Foundations of Global Finance: Engagements with the Work of Timothy J. Sinclair (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange This panel seeks to further understanding of the politics of global finance by engaging and extending the rich intellectual resources of Timothy J. Sinclair. Papers consider his social foundations approach: (1) in theoretical terms, seeking to locate it and put it into conversation with the broader political economy of finance; (2) in terms of intellectual lineages, by discussing Sinclair’s intellectual influences and their relevance for understanding the politics of finance today; (3) in substantive analytical terms, by reviewing the latest research on rating agencies and rating practices; (4) in methodological terms, by drilling down into the specific ways that Sinclair investigated the ‘micro-practices’ and institutions of global finance; and (5) in terms of his focus on the politics of knowledge, epistemic authority, and possible futures. Reflecting the commitment to eclecticism that was an important element of Sinclair’s scholarship, the panel critically engages and extends the social foundations of finance approach in a range of directions.

The continuum of gendered violence – everydayness, trauma and insecurity (Gendering International Relations Working Group) Room: Stuart Hall, The Exchange Feminist scholars point to the significance of studying conflict as a continuum of violence, noting that it is rarely confined in terms of time and space. This points to the significance of studying violence and conflict in unorthodox spaces and seeking to break the public-private divide. This involves taking account of individual stories of violence and of activism. This panel brings together a conversation that centres individual stories of violence and resistance across different sites of existence.

The political economy of domestic jurisdictions (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Justham, Symphony Hall A panel on the theme of the political economy of domestic jurisdictions

Troubling the domestic and the international in South East Europe (South East Europe Working Group) Room: Room 102, Library The papers in this panel creatively and in a nuanced manner take on the multiple scales of practice and analysis in SEE. Examining the complex relationship between the domestic and the international, the panellists will focus on themes like peace, symbolic power, ontological security, and economic voting patterns. Employing diverse methods and approaches, the panel contributes to the larger project of rethinking International Relations in and from SEE.

Whose State? Statehood Conflict in Europe and its Neighbourhood (Orphan Papers track) Room: Room 103, Library This panel brings together contributions that explore various dimensions of conflicts over statehood, be it secession, more intra- or inter- state conflict, in the broader region of Europe, and which fundamentally contest the concepts of the state, territory and people. In this way and echoing the Conference’s title, the panel asks ‘whose state’ policy makers, researchers and everyday people talk about and inter alia explores: how sub-ethnic groups within a state impact and are impacted by conflict (e.g. in Georgia or Bosnia)? How is knowledge about conflict produced and how can we challenge more top-down (mis)readings of conflict, such as of Ukraine, and how can we improve analytical, and consequently policy, pitfalls in conflict management? The panel includes in-depth single case studies on a diverse themes and regions as well as more cross-case comparative analyses, by researchers from a range of seniority levels and institutional and regional affiliations, including conflict-affected areas. By doing so, the panel also responds to the Conference’s call for diversifying our academic scholarship.

Whose futures: the role of fiction in re/imagining climate politics. (Environment Working Group) Room: Room 105, Library This panel is interested in the possibilities of using fiction in climate research. As climate change is increasingly understood as a challenge for dominant ways of thinking, rethinking becomes a tool for change. Fiction’s role in research can therefore be a method of critique and reimagining, but more reflexively, it can push researchers to think beyond existing imaginaries. Papers on this panel explore the role of fiction in understanding alternative future imaginaries from a variety of global positions. Together, these papers raise questions of whose futures are imagined and whose endings are considered inevitable.

Applied History and British Foreign Policy (Foreign Policy Working Group) Room: Fortissimo, Hyatt This panel seeks to demonstrate the value of a historical approach to analysing foreign policy. The papers each examine a historical case study from the UK and apply it to a contemporary dilemma of world politics. The resulting panel looks to both historicise prior British foreign policy and explore how previous diplomats and policymakers addressed the respective dilemmas, as well as consider the potential for, and limits of, drawing analogies from the past to understand the present. As such, it has implications for FPA and IR methods, as well as British foreign policy studies. The panellists range from junior to senior colleagues. All are or will be BISA members should the panel be accepted.

Contestations of sovereignty and democracy: History, legitimacy, volatility (Orphan Papers track) Room: Dolce, Hyatt Contestations of sovereignty and democracy: History, legitimacy, volatility

Europe and Global Security (European Security Working Group) Room: Room 101, Library Europe and Global Security

Everyday action in times of economic change: historical lessons for contemporary international trends (International Political Economy Working Group) Room: Concerto, Hyatt BISA 2024 IPEG panel proposal: Everyday action in times of economic change: historical lessons for contemporary international trends Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group Chair: James A. Morrison (London School of Economics and Political Science) Everyday perceptions of inequality in periods of international economic turbulence: Evidence from the British interwar years Author: Kasper Arabi (University of Warwick) Forestalling hegemonic decline: Walter Runciman, trade protectionism and Britain’s search for systemic openness Author: Oksana Levkovych (London School of Economics and Political Science) The “siren song” of Smoot-Hawley: Metaphor and masculinity in US trade policy, 1981-2021 Author: Edward Knudsen (University of Oxford) The pandemic, ‘the economy’ and race: how economic histories mobilised American anti-lockdown and Black Lives Matter protesters. Author: Jessica Eastland-Underwood (University of Warwick) This panel examines the role of agency in times of political and economic change looking at histories that are both foundational and novel to our disciplinary identities in IPE: from the interwar abandonment of the Gold Standard and free trade by the UK to advancement of protectionism and the response to the pandemic in the USA. The panel’s emphasis on agency as a means of understanding of the evolving dynamics of structural changes goes to the heart of 2024 conference’s address of the question whose international studies are we teaching, researching, writing, and contributing to. It also reflects on the limits of existing theories and what kind of biases we as researchers bring into our analyses when we use archival records and sources available in real time. The four papers grapple with the underpinnings of global economic order by examining the role that everyday agents and their ideas play in defining the struggle brought about by economic change. Analysing the economic disintegration of the interwar period and the current fracturing of the liberal international order, the papers address the relationship between economic theory, foreign trade policy and the international monetary system, between inequality and international political economy. Arabi’s paper investigates how developments in the international political economy are interpreted on the everyday level and shape the way everyday actors experience their own position in the (international) economy. Focusing on perceptions of economic inequality among British everyday agents in the interwar years, he shows how the economic turbulence leading up to the Great Depression and the abandonment of the gold standard left important marks on the social cohesion of the British society which would influence British politics in the years that followed. Doing so, he deploys a historicist approach and emphasises the importance of archival evidence when exploring the links between the everyday and the international. While this might be seen as a paradox – because everyday people only rarely find their way to the archival record – Arabi showcases how historical experiences hidden in the archives are key to understanding the importance of non-elite actors and their practices when it comes to international affairs. Actors and practices that otherwise will remain overlooked. Levkovych's paper analyses the UK’s “(Br)exit” from the global economic order in the 1930s. For decades, relative economic decline had created structural incentives for the UK to rethink its approach to trade. But, contrary to the predictions of structural and materialist theories, the UK continued to support the liberal international trading system that it had fostered in the 19th century. With the onset of the Great Depression - and then the 1931 financial crisis - the call for protection gained real political salience. Even then, however, Levkovych finds, the shift toward protection was deferred, deflected, and diminished. This was due to the concerted efforts of a group of pragmatic liberal free-traders in the National Government led by the President of the Board of Trade Walter Runciman. By analysing structural change as engendering active human agency, she shows how better understanding of the contingency involved in everyday economic policymaking helps us to question and correct analytical assumptions of structural theories that continue to dominate the field of international political economy. Knudsen contributes to an ever-growing literature on the relationship between masculinity and economic structures in his paper through a study of the language used to legitimise international trade policy. Although the sexualisation of trade may initially appear counter-intuitive, Knudsen demonstrates that political actors in the USA deploy sexual language in their argumentation regarding tariff policy. Using a close reading methodology uncovers the many ways that American presidents across a four-decade period to appeal to the public using gendered language to make trade policy more visceral. Although presidents are undoubtedly elite actors, the act of drafting speeches and choosing metaphors remains a part of ‘everyday politics’ that can be obscured in technical analyses of trade policy history. Knudsen highlights the way that a lack of reflection on these rhetorical choices can miss how the male experience is often centred in international political economy. Eastland-Underwood examines the links between everyday political thought, economic ideas and racism in her paper showing how economic histories mobilised protesters in the USA in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. ‘The economy’ remains amongst the most prominent political concept in American elections, although Eastland-Underwood questions whether we understand what Americans mean when they say ‘the economy’ motivates them politically. Although Covid-19 was a health crisis, the political response to the pandemic reveals many assumptions about economic systems both in the USA and globally. In examining Black Lives Matter next to the anti-lockdown protests, she argues that interpretivist methodologies can help shine a light on the many blind spots of international political economy, particularly race. Eastland-Underwood identifies that memories of economic histories are not limited to the elite but also inform everyday political thought, playing a crucial role in the reproduction of white supremacy. By helping us understand what effect both contemporary and historical motivations of the everyday actors, their ideas and rhetoric can have on the global economic order, these papers create opportunity for a debate that both cuts across traditional lines of epistemological enquiry in IPE and addresses the boundaries of equality, diversity and inclusivity in our discipline.

Feminist Foreign Policy: Labelling, Narratives and Performativity (Gendering International Relations Working Group) Room: Jane How, Symphony Hall States carefully curate the way they communicate their feminist aspirations in international relations, resorting to a range of discursive performative practices. This panel takes stock of the labelling, branding, narration and performativity of feminist foreign policies.

Gendering the Military, Militarising Gender: Military Representations in Pop Culture and Social Media (Critical Military Studies Working Group) Room: Room 102, Library The consequences of further integration of women, and LGBTQ+ personnel, in the military is a core object of analysis for feminist military studies and military sociology. This question is often addressed from a liberal feminist viewpoint, asking whether increased female presence in the military is ‘empowering’ for women, or whether it only ends up reproducing and reinforcing gendered patriarchal structures. Departing from this dichotomous perspective, this panel critically interrogates how the integration of female and LBGTQ+ personnel impacts gendered military practices and the traditional hegemonically masculine image of the military. This panel contributes to the diversification of studies in politics, by focusing on military representations in pop culture and social media. A central part of our everyday lives, pop culture and social media are increasingly afforded academic attention as constitutive sites of politics. Through analyses of both Western and non-Western militaries, the panel sheds light on how gendered representations can camouflage the ultraviolent image of the military and on how social media play a role in (re)militarisation processes. By so doing, we address the fundamental question of how gender and gendered representations can be mobilised for (re)militarisation purposes. Overall, we offer multifaceted analyses of how military representation in pop culture and social media offer avenues to reproduce and renegotiate gendered military narratives, and what impacts these have on the military as an institution and on state (re)militarisation.

Historicising Geopolitics and Geopolitical Practices (Historical Sociology and International Relations Working Group) Room: Drawing Room, Hyatt These papers look at social practices that shape and inform foreign policy and geopolitics in ints broader sense, by looking specific issues, actors, or case studies

Military Humanitarianism: Reimagining the Nexus Between Aid Operations and Armed Forces (British International History Working Group) Room: Stuart Hall, The Exchange Historians have largely written about humanitarianism and the military as parallel but separate subjects, ones which can enhance interpretations of the other, but which rarely overlap. Both fields have yet to fully engage with the many points of connection between humanitarian organisations and military actors. This panel address this blind spot by considering the nexus of military and humanitarian histories in detail. These papers identify instances of past miliary humanitarianism and places the often-elastic theoretical concept into historical context. We will explores the liminality of humanitarian and military action in practice and the fluidity of ‘military’ and ‘humanitarian’ identities in conflict environments from the 19th to the 21st century. In doing so, we highlight the intersections between these two histories to show how these interactions enrich our interpretations of conflict, power, and international hierarchies. Existing scholarship on military humanitarianism has largely been limited to the post-Cold War era. IR scholarship has entrenched a belief that the paradoxical phenomenon of military interventions motivated or justified by humanitarian ideals emerged at the end of the Cold War as an unprecedented result of the increasing dominance of liberal interventionism and human rights rhetoric in international spheres during the mid-1990s and early. Recent historical scholarship has challenged the post-Cold War chronology by revealing a longer genealogy of humanitarian feeling and intervention. This panel builds on this new historiography by adopting an expansive definition of military humanitarianism and takes a new approach by tracing field-based practices as well as identifying the strategic and human consequences of these overlapping military and humanitarian spheres. These papers demonstrate that military humanitarianism was far from unprecedented in the 1990s, that humanitarian intervention was not the only – nor even the primary – form that the military-humanitarian nexus took, and that understanding its evolution through past conflicts is crucial for nuancing scholarship on the politics and power of both humanitarian and military actors.

New Paradigms from the Global South (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Room 103, Library d

New Technologies and Future War (War Studies Working Group) Room: Room 105, Library New Technologies and Future War

Perspectives on conflict management and stabilisation (Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group) Room: Exec 1, ICC Reflecting on stabilisation, conflict management and robust peacekeeping missions undertaken by the UN, NATO, and individual states

Revisiting the postcolonial critiques of IR (Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group) Room: Exec 9, ICC d

Understanding Violent Movements (Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism) Room: Exec 10, ICC Although central to our understanding of conflict and political violence, social movements remain largely neglected in the literature on international studies. This panel contributes to debates about the importance of framing, mobilisation, and networks: it offers the opportunity for evidenced-based research drawing on often neglected cases and issues, including enduring questions about leadership and transitions, empirical work on insurgencies and the emotional appeal of violent activism.

‘Making friends and influencing people’: a Russian toolbox for managing others on the international stage (Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group) Room: Mary Sturge, The Exchange This panel will present on ‘Making friends and influencing people’: a Russian toolbox for managing others on the international stage