BISA 2021 conference - Forget International Studies?

Name: BISA 2021 conference - Forget International Studies?
Start: 2021-06-21T08:55:00+01:00
End: 2021-06-23T21:00:00+01:00
Location: No location set

21 Jun 2021, 08:55 → 23 Jun 2021, 21:00 Europe/London

Description

Welcome to the event management area for #BISA2021. We're looking forward to welcoming you to our virtual conference.

Contact

conferences@bisa.ac.uk

Monday 21 June
- 09:00 → 10:30
  
  Roundtable / (un)Disciplined Subjects: Questioning IR and Academia Room 8
  
  International Relations (IR) has long been grappling with the issue of defining itself as a discipline. This has initiated important debates: while some aim to draw strict disciplinary boundaries, others expand the scope of the discipline with the aim to make it ‘truly’ global. The objective of this collective discussion is to explore the myriad of ways in which IR, including the debates on what IR as a discipline is/should be, is ‘disciplining’ scholar and student subjectivities. The discussion, first, explores formal/informal and explicit/implicit hierarchies that have been reproduced even in the critical circles. This discussion considers aspects of IR, including, the fetishization of the state and its gaze as well as broader structures of academia such as science, authority, and expertise, where these canon-building practices homogenise, silence, and exclude. Second, the discussion explores the discipline of IR and academia as a power structure where knowledge is commodified and made ‘useful’ for the policy-making sphere. Moreover, as different roles and identities are crafted and imposed on individuals within the academy, resistance to those roles and identities can be met with punitive consequences, stifling creativity. This collaborative practice, involving five facilitators and the audience, opens up the space for collective sharing of experiences and ideas to deal with the hierarchies in IR and power structures in academia.
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Chair: Andrew Delatolla (University of Leeds)
  
  Participants: Ali Bilgic (Loughborough University) , Swati Parashar (University of Gothenburg) , Toni Haastrup (University of Stirling) , Andrew Delatolla (The American University in Cairo) , Cai Wilkinson (Deakin University)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Between the politics and poetics of IR knowledge production Room 1
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: Sharri Plonski (Queen Mary University of London)
  
  Chair: Jenna Marshall (Universität Kassel)
  - Coloniality of knowledge production and instrumentalisation of positionality
    
    Positionality and the confession of so-called ‘privilege’ as a way of revealing unequal power dynamics in knowledge production has become an increasingly encouraged and lauded reflexive practice in the academy. However, we contend that positionality should be interrogated for its potentially expropriating, violent implications for the very people it is supposed to serve. It necessitates the internal reification of material, assumed and imagined hierarchies between people, which then is advertised and (re)produced by its utterance. Firstly, we discuss the instrumentalisation of positionality. To what extent does declaring and publicly acknowledging ‘privilege’ paradoxically act as a means of centring whiteness through the narcissistic gaze. Thus public positioning, rather than ameliorating unequal power dynamics in the production of knowledge, can sometimes in fact perform the function of the redemption of guilt, or worse, constitute a hidden power move in which one is able to use a critical, feminist, postcolonial methodology to in fact signal and reinstate their privilege vis a vis women of colour. Second, we ask who is able to declare positionality? Drawing upon Barbara Applebaum’s work on ‘privilege’ as complicity (2010), we identify the role that the feminist and critical labels play in affording white speakers critical credibility while simultaneously enabling them to retain mainstream legitimacy through their proximity to whiteness. Thirdly, we explore both the burden and disadvantage that this supposedly critical and emancipatory methodology places on women of colour, who do not stand to benefit from the performative and redemptive function of positionality
    
    Authors: Jasmine Gani (University of St Andrews) , Rabea Khan (University of St Andrews)
  - Narrating Singularities?: De-colonising IR through Indigenous Knowledge Systems
    
    The discipline of International Relations has often been critiqued for geo-centric parochialism with scholars increasingly engaging with its colonial origins and legacies. This recent engagement underscores the necessity to unravel and disrupt the epistemic imperialism caused by forces of capitalism and colonialism. The paper offers a contribution by drawing on Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) to puncture the monolithic cultures of modernity by consciously crafting engagement based on principles of reciprocity and embededness and contests the basic tenets of neo-liberal modernisation by underscoring collective forms of rights and control over resources. The first part of the paper highlights the strenuous relationship of Indigenous Knowledge Systems to trajectories of state led ‘development’ within the neo-liberal context of post-colonial India. Drawing on the works of Veena Das and Alpa Shaw, the second section develops the concept of ‘unfinished histories’ by highlighting the role of the state in foundational violence and presents the narratives of indigenous communities as quintessential sites of resistance. These include highlighting the continuities between the current engagement with ‘traditional knowledge’ and the repression, expropriation, and imposition of knowledge in the colonial era thus exposing the colonial cartography of expertise that shapes current global policy-making on ‘traditional knowledge’. It last section further expands on the use of IKS as an effective political tool to advocate for pluralism and acceptance of lived differences. Through the engagement with IKS, the paper thus seeks to elaborates on questions of recognition, legitimacy and visibility within knowledge production in IR by highlighting the disciplinary complicity in reproducing certain colonial hierarchies and binaries.
    
    Author: Ananya Sharma (ASHOKA UNIVERSITY)
  - Decolonising Politics Curricula: An evaluation of how race- and colonial-related themes and thinkers are represented within Politics curricula.
    
    Abstract:
    Movements such as ‘Why is my Curriculum White?’ as well as the recent resurging and widening interest in Black Lives Matter highlight the sheer weight of Whiteness within Britain and Britain’s HE institutions in particular. Work that interrogates race, racism and whiteness in HE is growing and conversations about decolonisation have begun – to varying degrees – across the disciplines. Working from the argument that Politics disciplines need decolonising, and as part of ongoing research, I have conducted an audit of Politics curricula reviewing how well (if at all) race- and colonial-related themes are represented in Politics disciplines in British HE. The focus is on Politics degree programmes and related sub-disciplines– e.g. BA(Hons) Politics, BSc(Hons) Politics and International Relations, BSc(Hons) Politics and International Studies etc – and, in line with a critical race approach, the primary focus is on race and colonial content but I also consider how gender is represented too. This paper: (1) discusses the findings of this audit of core modules for the main Politics programmes at 101 British Universities; (2) considers what the findings say about the dynamics of race, racism and whiteness within Politics disciplines and (3) explores the implications of curricula in terms of student experiences – particularly racially minoritised students.
    
    Key Words:
    Race, whiteness, pedagogy, knowledge production, ‘Decolonising the Curriculum’, discipline.
    
    Author: Siobhan O'Neill (University of Manchester)
  - Race and Global Democracy
    
    Theories of “global democracy” are often practically situated within Western-led globalization and post-Cold War liberal international order. However, in the first half of the twentieth century, “Howard School” theorists were invoking democracy in their critiques of white supremacy and imperial relations, thereby building an account of global democracy as the inscription of racial equality on a global scale. Democracy, for these scholars, was less a domestic institution that needed to be scaled up but a form of equality that could only be realized by transforming racial hierarchies at home and abroad. Returning to the work of Alain Locke, I intend to do two things: (1) theorize a notion of global democracy severed from liberalism, as neither institutions nor values, but a practice of inscribing equality in the international system and (2) reorient the historiography of IR such that questions of democracy and equality in international politics become central to the field.
    
    Author: Kavi Abraham (School of Government and IR, Durham University)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Challenges to European Security Room 6
  
  Sponsor: European Security Working Group
  
  Convener: Andrew Cottey (University College Cork)
  
  Chair: Andrew Cottey (University College Cork)
  
  Discussant: Antonia Niehuss (University of St Andrews)
  - The other side of the coin? Contesting security: Multiple modalities, atypical security actors and the security-migration nexus in Scotland
    
    The security-migration nexus is ubiquitous throughout Europe and beyond. An avalanche of scholarship has explored the construction of migration as a security threat in general and, in the case of the UK, the creation of the ‘hostile environment’ in particular – the problematic nature of each being well documented. Yet, far less attention has been paid to activities that contest this process. Utilising Balzacq’s four modalities of contestation – desecuritisation, resistance, emancipation and resilience – this article addresses the imbalance, exploring how asylum and refugee-advocacy NGOs, as vital, under-explored actors in the security drama, engage in and contest security-migration politics. Using Scotland (2018-19) as an illustrative case and adopting an inductive, practice-centred approach to contestation, findings demonstrate that NGOs are successfully contesting the security-migration nexus in Scotland, supporting the ‘surviving’ and ‘thriving’ of asylum seeker and refugee communities, problematising previous conceptualisations of ‘UK’ asylum and refugee politics, with implications extending far beyond UK shores. The article helps refine the theorisation of contestation by demonstrating the value of attending to both atypical security actors and contestation practices, as well as showing the applicability of ‘modalities’ of contestation to be dependent on the practice in question, elucidating the blindness of single-modality studies to critical insights.
    
    Author: Ian Paterson (University of Glasgow)
  - Judeo-Christian civilizationism: a new challenge to common European foreign policy
    
    How do divergent interpretations of European identity impact the EU’s foreign policy? The EU’s identity is said to shape its character as a ‘normative actor’ promoting universal democratic values, including to its southern neighbourhood. Yet a competing civilizationist version of European identity is increasingly invoked on the radical right, and frames Europe as defined by ‘Judeo-Christian’ values and threatened by non-European cultures, especially Islam. Drawing on role theory, this paper argues that rising, radical civilizationist interpretations of European identity are undermining any normative consensus about Europe’s roles and responsibilities. These identity variations shape divergent responses to foreign policy challenges, and this can be seen through the impact on attitudes towards the Israeli-Palestinian arena. In Judeo-Christian civilizationist discourse, Israel is championed as the West’s bulwark against militant Islam, prompting support for Israeli government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian arena. This trend is illustrated through a case study of Austria’s 2017-2019 ÖVP-FPÖ coalition, based on in-depth elite interviews. The FPÖ – motivated by anti-Islamic politics and a desire to detoxify from its anti-Semitic roots – adopted Judeo-Christian civilizationist discourse to reframe Jews and Israel as part of the European civilizational family, in opposition to Islam. This made possible a convergence with the ÖVP on this issue, and enabled a platform of unprecedented rhetorical and diplomatic support for the Netanyahu government. This further undermined the potential for unity among EU members in the Israeli-Palestinian arena.
    
    Author: Toby Greene (Bar Ilan University)
  - Revisiting NATO’s endurance: A sociological exploration of the post-9/11 Euro-Atlantic counterterrorism
    
    NATO’s persistence after the Cold war has generated a prolific inter-paradigmatic debate in IR. The article pinpoints two key limits of this discussion. They relate to the conception of NATO’s consensus as dysfunctional (because of the difficulty to reach multilateral agreements against the multi-faced risks of post-bipolar insecurity) and the static vision of the member states’ national interests as the drivers of NATO’s evolution. To overcome those limits, the article elaborates a renewed investigation of NATO’s durability, that sociologically captures the logics inhabiting the multiplicity of the Euro-Atlantic risk management in terms of threat perceptions and state interests involved. Based on a reworked version of the practice-based constructivism and 96 interviews, my hypothesis is that NATO’s consensus is not dysfunctional, but endures a double change in its social structure, related to NATO’s professional armature and the sites where the multilateral and professional struggles are performed. My main idea is that NATO’s security is segmented. The practice of power at NATO no longer follows a convergent pattern that concentrates the struggles around a delimited stake, as it was the case with the interstate rivalry of the Cold war. The risks being multiple, the exercise of power is reorganized along different policies (or segments), which are distinct in their socio-political logics and weakly structured in their internal dynamics. I illustrate my hypothesis with NATO’s post-9/11 counterterrorism trajectory as a case study. Doing so, the article takes to a new step the constructivist research on NATO and opens cross-theoretical dialogues in the study of the Alliance and the Euro-Atlantic security.
    
    Author: Julien Pomarède (Université libre de Bruxelles)
  - Transatlantic e-evidence sharing and data protection: a conlficting vision or functional cooperation?
    
    How do the EU and the US cooperate on the issue of criminal justice in cyberspace and in particular on the sharing of e-evidence? Given that the digital environment is ubiquitous in our lives, digital evidence is now crucial for most criminal investigations. However, data is often stored in multiple countries and jurisdictions, which creates problems when it comes to the cross-border sharing of this data. This paper looks at the EU-US cooperation on criminal justice in cyberspace and in particular at the issue of e-evidence sharing. The key research question is: how do the two organisations cooperate on this policy area, given the inherent complexity of the issue (data in different jurisdictions), the well-known differences between the EU and the US on data protection, and the complexities stemming from the multi-level governance of the EU? Moreover, the paper explores whether and how the actors try to reconcile any differences they may have, reaching compromises and establishing functional forms of cooperation.
    
    Author: Dimitrios Anagnostakis (University of Aberdeen)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Critical Approaches to Extreme Right Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism. Room 2
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Conveners: Alice Martini , Raquel da Silva (ISCTE) , Tom Pettinger (Warwick University)
  
  Chair: Tom Pettinger (Warwick University)
  
  Discussant: Lee Jarvis (University of East Anglia)
  - Countering Far-Right threat through Britishness: The Prevent Duty in Further Education
    
    In 2015, the Prevent duty made statutory the requirements for public sector workers to show ‘due regard’ for preventing people from becoming involved in extremist and terrorist activity. It also made the promotion of British Values mandatory within the education sector, where teachers were required to embed these values into their everyday pedagogic practices. This paper draws on a four year empirical study surrounding educationalists enactments of the duty within Greater Manchester Further Education institutions and examines the scope through which British values became embedded in the fight against terrorism and extremism. Specifically, it will posit that the labelling of these values as “British” resulted in a perceived promotion of ethno-nationalist Britishness that served to feed into far-right rhetoric. Adopting a critical terrorism studies perspective, the paper will therefore argue that despite efforts of staff to promote British values, or “our values” as they reframed the agenda, as the antithesis to all forms of threat, the discourse of British values limited their capacity to do so, minimising the threat of the far-right whilst exacerbating that of Islamist-inspired ideologies through their difference.
    
    Author: Natalie James (The University of Leeds)
  - How has extreme right violence been criminalised in contemporary Portugal?
    
    There is historical evidence pointing to the fact that extreme right violence has not always been prosecuted under terrorism legislation, but under various other criminal statutes. In Portugal, since the regulation of terrorism in the Penal Code in 1982, namely through Articles 300 and 301, which were then replaced by the new law on the fight against terrorism in 2003 (Law no. 52/2003, dated August, 22nd), there have only been three terrorism convictions. However, none was related to extreme right violence, despite the existence of numerous ideologically motivated crimes committed by groups and individuals occupying this side of the political spectrum. At the end of the 20th century, extreme right violence was closely linked to the arrival in Portugal of the skinhead subculture, which joined the already existing nationalist organisation MAN (Movimento de Acção Nacional/Movement of National Action). At the beginning of the new millennium, the skinhead movement was strengthened by the creation of the PHS (Portugal Hammer Skin), which, for a brief period, appeared at the forefront of the nationalist milieu. This paper examines how the violent actions carried out by these organisations (including murders, destruction of patrimony and numerous inter-ethnic assaults) have been criminalised by the Portuguese judicial system in comparison with the latter two terrorist convictions that took place in Portugal in 2012 (ETA-related) and in 2019 (Daesh-related). Finally, we explore what lessons can be learned regarding broader efforts to counter extreme right violence.
    
    Authors: Raquel da Silva (ISCTE) , Mariana Barbosa (UCP) , Cátia Carvalho (Universidade do Porto) , João Paulo Ventura (Polícia Judiciária)
  - Bringing misogyny into the study of far-right terrorism
    
    The racism, pro-life, and extreme Christian ideology have long been acknowledged to be a feature in far-right violent ideology in the United States. However, what’s been less acknowledged is the underpinning element of misogyny. This paper aims to reflect on why this is. First, it encounters the resistance of Terrorism Studies to engage with and validate the concept of patriarchal or intimate terrorism. Even though scholarship on patriarchal terrorism can be traced back to the 1970s, mainstream Terrorism Studies has never fully engaged with the idea. Second, this paper aims to demonstrate that this lack of engagement works in tandem with the bare minimum of acknowledgement of misogyny in the far-right. Explicitly, it argues that it is hard see to misogyny in a largely patriarchal and masculinity system. This is even more important today with the rise of incels and the manosphere, especially in how these support the US’s flirtation with Trump’s misogynist and racist driven neo-fascism.
    
    Author: Caron Gentry (St Andrews University)
  - Extremism is what we make of it!: the normalized and banal extremism of Spanish Far Right
    
    Extremism has been widely examined as an empty signifier and a politically loaded category, usually associated to CT and CVE policies targeting specific groups and communities (Breen Smyth, 2013; Kundnani and Hayes, 2018). Nevertheless, the literature has not extensively addressed how these categories and policy programmes deal with far-right extremism. Consequently, this paper examines the construction of “extremism” in Spain, where, in 2019, the right-wingpolitical party VOX entered the political institutions. Despite its Islamophobic, xenophobic and Francoist glorification's discourse, the concept of 'extremist' has not been applied to this party, and this has not been framed within P/CVE programmes. There are, therefore, red lines for what can and cannot be said on ethnonationalist and religious terrorism, but these lines become blurred for the far-right discourses. Analyzing public controversies around “extremism”, this paper wants to explore the limits of the (un)acceptable, specifically in the routinized and normalized nature of far-right’s discourses. It will then build on Billig's notion of 'banal nationalism' (1995) to examine the lack of response and policy concern towards these discourses to show that “extremism” is what we make of it.
    
    Authors: Laura Fernández de Mosteyrín (UNED) , Alice Martini
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Emotions, temporality and affect Room 3
  
  Sponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: Clara Eroukhmanoff (LSBU)
  
  Chair: Clara Eroukhmanoff (LSBU)
  - Resistance, Solidarity and Memory: How wounded bodies affected the East Timorese struggle for independence.
    
    On November 12, 1991 the Indonesian troops fired upon a peaceful memorial procession to a Cemetery in Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste. In that occasion, more than 271 East Timorese were killed and an equal number were disappeared and are believed dead. A footage of the Massacre was made by international journalists and it is considered to be the turning point of the history of Timor-Leste. According to Max Sthal, responsible for the footage, the victims that were still alive and could still move were making their way towards him: “They were showing me their wounds…they wanted the world to see. They were dying around me, but – and the survivors later told me this – more important than the fact of their dying was that their deaths be meaningful; that all this should be ‘for’ something” (Sthal, 2017).
    Drawing on this perspective, I propose that by considering the wounded body as the element that compels us to respond to violence; makes us vulnerable and uncomfortable; and disrupts our “human ontological dignity of being as body” (Cavarero, 2007, p.5), we can examine the importance and the centrality of the wounded body and its affects in the East Timorese struggle for independence. So, this research asks: how did wounded bodies affect the East Timorese struggle for independence? My central hypothesis is that wounded bodies were mobilized as affective technologies of shame that were central to resistance and solidarity movements in/for Timor-Leste during the 90s, to call international attention to the ‘’Question of Timor-Leste’’ and still plays a key role in memory practices in the country.
    
    Author: Marcelle Trote Martins (The University of Manchester)
  - #JeSuisToujoursCharlie: Sharing time and emotion after terror attacks
    
    Memory and emotion are key components in commemoration. Following both memory and emotive ‘turns’ in International Relations, there is a large body of literature at the intersection of media, memory and commemoration but the majority of this literature orients commemoration solely to the past. Implicitly following a Western, linear understanding of time, commemorative events are often framed emotively, allowing states and/or individuals to ‘move on’ (Hollis-Toure, 2016) or ‘heal’ (Der Derian, 2011) though outpourings of grief, sorrow, solidarity and togetherness. Yet, there is a growing acknowledgment that time, especially ‘commemorative time’ (Zerubavel, 2005) is not fixed or stable. Current literature fails to adequately conceptualize commemoration in light of ‘new temporalities’ (Hoskins, 2004) opened up by technology, the role of emotion in creating these, and the impact both have on the formation of commemorative communities in the present.
    Reflecting on recent events on Twitter where the hashtags #toujourscharlie and #plusquejamaischarlie were used to respond to a terror attack in September 2020 and to commemorate a previous one in 2015, this paper looks to explore the way that real-time media interactions as commemorative practices are politically significant. More specifically, it suggests that the immediate sharing of intensified and repeated emotions on social media destabilizes the linear narrative of commemoration favoured by the state. It allows us to see commemoration as a multi-directional practice that is not contingent on Western linear perceptions of time.
    
    Author: Emma Connolly (Open University)
  - Uncertainty, emotion, and self-idealisation in public perception of international crises
    
    (Accepted to BISA 2020, resubmission)
    
    How do people make sense of distant, but disturbing international events? Why are some representations more appealing than others? And most importantly, what do they mean for how societies imagine themselves?
    Going beyond conventional analysis of perception at the level of accuracy, this paper will argue that public attitudes to international crises are shaped primarily by local anxieties, emotions, cultural memories, insecurities and hopes, and above all - by the societal need for positive and continuous self-conceptions. I will look for the drawing self behind its portraits of others - the inner motivations and needs of a subject that lead it to perceive events and their agents in a certain light.
    This paper will draw on original interview materials and polling data to examine public perception of the Arab Spring in Russia and the UK as these crises unraveled, relate these perceptions to dominant political and media representations, and make an argument both about and beyond this particular case. The paper will provide evidence of how societies idealise themselves through imagining distant others in times of crises and uncertainty. Anxiety reduction and identity self-affirmation - not accuracy - will be shown as the key elements that determine public attitudes to major international events.
    
    Author: Dmitry Chernobrov (University of Sheffield)
  - Contestatory frames in nuclear politics: emotions and the emergence of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
    
    Despite opposition from the nuclear powers, disarmament proponents, under the banner of the humanitarian initiative, successfully influenced the adoption of The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The humanitarian initiative is considered a turning point in nuclear politics, where debates shifted away from strategic goals and focused on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. This paper investigates the role of emotions, represented in discourses and images of the humanitarian initiative, in facilitating the emergence of the new treaty. The study is grounded in the constructivist tradition but seeks to push existing understandings further. Drawing on the literature that focuses on emotions and norm dynamics, the study argues that emotions constituted robust contestatory frames to perceptions of fear that sustain nuclear weapons’ appropriateness. The paper adds to existing understandings about new norm generation, engaging with the process of norm contestation and introducing emotions as a powerful norm making strategy. It also contributes to the growing body of work investigating the emergence of the TPNW, shedding light on dynamics beyond traditional IR thinking.
    
    Author: Carolina Pantoliano Panico (University of Auckland)
  - Subjects of Quantum Measurement: Bodies, Affect and Surveillance in the Age of Terror
    
    Propelled by the urge to “measure” identities and locate dangerous bodies, the globalisation of surveillance has stimulated massive scholarly engagement. However, critical accounts still prove myopic on two important respects. Firstly, they leave the embodied, affective dimension of surveillance underexplored. Secondly, they are premised on a framework of certainty and unambiguity that sees “Self” and “Other” as inherently mutually exclusive subject-positions. Building on quantum mechanics and affect theory, this paper addresses these shortcomings by interrogating the notion of “measurement” underlying surveillance practices in the War on Terror. I argue that technologies of surveillance operate as quantum apparatuses of identity measurement which seek to make bodily affects unambiguous to construct stable collective subjects. In the first section, I suggest that dominant theorisations of surveillance have systematically failed to examine the concept of measurement that explicitly informs its dynamics. Second, I draw a parallel with quantum mechanics – another field uniquely characterised by its focus on measurement – to introduce the notion of quantum measurement as a tool that crucially illuminates the relation between the affective dimension of surveillance and its identity-fixing function. Lastly, I apply this framework to the case of airport security, exposing the ambiguity of affect as a crucial locus of resistance to the everyday politics of terror.
    
    Author: Italo Brandimarte (University of Cambridge)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Hegel / Hegelianism and Ethics in IR Room 5
  
  Sponsor: Ethics and World Politics Working Group
  
  Conveners: David J. Karp (University of Sussex) , Seán Molloy (University of Kent)
  
  Chair: Susan Murphy (Trinity College Dublin)
  - , ‘Hegel, Schmitt, and International Studies: Understanding State and Society of the Future through the Philosophical Pasts of Continental Thought.'
    
    How can we embrace the philosophical knowledge(s) of the Past in understanding the disciplinary challenges of the Future in International Studies? The paper engages with this question reflecting on the juxtaposition of state and society in past, present, and future political thought, highlighting the interplay between politics and ethics. It seeks to discuss state and society through Hegel’s and Schmitt’s ‘past’ philosophical thought –influential for much of the ‘present’ IR– attempting to understand ‘future’ challenges. The concepts of state and society, the dynamics between them, and the manifestation of ethics and morality through them, are essential for present IR literature as state and society are located in the intersection of the international and the domestic, defining their distinction(s). Hegel has been fundamental in defining and distinguishing state and society in political terms, dialectically discussing the antithetical dynamics of their relationship, and identifying ‘ethical life’ as manifested through both state and society. Schmitt follows Hegel’s dialectic tradition in distinguishing state and society, but ‘ethical life’ for Schmitt is manifested only through the state. However, the state is designated elsewhere by Schmitt as predominant in the political domain, defined respectively by the friend-enemy antithesis; while ethics and morality are manifested through the society, predominant in non-political domains defined by economic, religious, moral, or aesthetic antithetical distinctions. The paper will discuss Hegel in juxtaposition with Schmitt, drawing attention to their respective interpretations of ethics and ‘ethical life’, in an attempt to understand state and society through the interplay of ethics and politics.
    
    Author: Zoi Vardanika (Independent Scholar)
  - 'The Responsibility to 'Respect' Human Rights: Rethinking Virtue Ethics and the Self/Other Relationship.’
    
    This paper radically reinterprets virtue ethics and neo-Hegalian theories of the self, through the lens of clarifying the relationship of each to human rights. At first glance, there are strong reasons to think that virtue ethics and theories of the self are incompatible with the contemporary idea of human rights. Virtue ethics seems incompatible because of the power and class-based attributes typically associated with ‘virtuous’ agents, and because of the approach's emphasis on the particular over the universal. In a similar vein, theories of the self seem too introspective; in emphasising the responsibilities of the powerful to respond, they potentially de-centre and de-prioritise the rights and agency of the ‘other’. This paper moves beyond these conservative interpretations of the two traditions. In doing so, it preserves what is most significant: the need for moral agents to reconstitute their identities so that human rights form a part of themselves. This can re-equip these currently-stale traditions for the challenges of the present, at a time when the world is actively contemplating the possible 'end' of the human rights project. At the same time, it helps to re-define the meaning of obligations to "respect" human rights.
    
    Author: David J. Karp (University of Sussex)
  - ‘Absolute Freedom and Terror’: Notes Neoliberalism’s Globalised Authoritarian Legacy
    
    Hegel’s influence on scholarship within international relations and international political theory has often come in a roundabout way through the ongoing influence of his thought upon critical and social theory and the theory of recognition. This paper turns to Hegel as a thinker of the problematic, contradictory and complex nature of modern ‘freedom’ and does so by looking at his comments on the French Revolutionary ‘Terror’ in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and his often overlooked account of ‘civil society’ (bürgerliche Gesellschaft) encompassing early 19th century European commercial relations in the Philosophy of Right (1821). Through this I consider to what extent Hegel’s account of freedom might help us to think through contemporary, abstract conceptions of ‘freedom’ mobilised by globalised forms of neoliberal ideology. I consider also how such an account might help us to better understand neoliberalism’s contemporary nationalist, authoritarian and even neo-fascist legacies which, in Hegel’s terms might be thought of as presenting an idea of freedom as the “fury of destruction.”
    
    Author: Tarik Kochi (University of Sussex)
  - ‘G.W.F. Hegel, E.H. Carr and the Development of Realist Ethics.’
    
    Carr identifies Hegel as one of the most significant Realist theorists of modernity. The paper investigates this claim and, in particular, how Carr’s reading of Hegel informed the development of his ethical positions in The Twenty Years’ Crisis, Conditions of Peace and elsewhere. The paper has two primary axes of interpretation: first, I examine the critiques of law and formalistic ethics offered by Hegel and Carr in Natural Law and The Twenty Years’ Crisis respectively. I argue that in place of universalist formulae and imperatives, Hegel and Carr offer more adaptively organic ethics based in judgment. The second element of the paper revolves around the question of how to think about ethics in this fluid manner. I argue that the Hegel-Carr dialectical mode of theorising the relationship between politics and ethics offers a powerful means of navigating the space between what is morally desirable and politically necessary that is more productive than the Kantian insistence that politics must bend its knee before morality.
    
    Author: Seán Molloy (University of Kent)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Reorienting the politics of climate change vulnerability Room 4
  
  Sponsor: Environment Working Group
  
  Conveners: Matthew Paterson (University of Manchester) , Charlotte Weatherill (University of Manchester)
  
  Chair: Matthew Paterson (University of Manchester)
  - The Political Economy of Climate Change Vulnerability in Indonesia: Identifying Who are Vulnerable and Why in Adaptation Context
    
    Vulnerability concept is not static and always contested by climate change adaptation (CCA) stakeholders. Understanding contestation among CCA stakeholders is a crucial aspect in CCA research. The contestation shapes the CCA governance in Indonesia and its impacts on vulnerable groups. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is one of the key actors involved in vulnerability discourse. An epistemic community of adaptation researchers within the IPCC forum has formulated vulnerability and diffused that knowledge through the Assessment Reports. Those documents are utilised by the Parties of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as a basis for negotiation processes and policies formulation. States adopt the idea of vulnerability from the IPCCC and institutionalise it into their national policies.
    Indonesia, as an archipelagic country with high population, also adopts vulnerability idea from the IPCCC and institutionalises the idea into a national action plan on climate change adaptation. The Indonesian Government seems to adopt the idea as it is, even “plagiarises” the definition of vulnerability in the national action plan document. This thesis brings in an idea that the concept of vulnerability from the IPCCC is general, and states should modify the idea to fit in with the local challenges and conditions. The inaccuracy of defining what is vulnerability and who are vulnerable might cause the most vulnerable groups being marginalised, hence increasing the gap between the haves and the have nots. The Government of Indonesia tends to use risk-hazard approach by focusing on the exposure level of climate change impacts towards systems and concerns more about internal biophysical factors such as topography and land use. Therefore, Jakarta as a coastal city facing sea-level rise threat and having a high population density is considered as the most vulnerable region, even though the people have high adaptive capacity.
    There are ambiguity and contingency of vulnerability in Indonesia. Each Indonesian Ministry might have a different understanding of vulnerability, and non-governmental actors also have their concept of vulnerability. This thesis aims to identify the contestation of the vulnerability concept and the dominant discourse of vulnerability in climate change adaptation governance in Indonesia. This thesis will use a political economy approach to understand climate change vulnerability. People are the focus of this approach by asking who is most vulnerable and why. This thesis will contribute to vulnerability debate by redefining who vulnerable people are and why based on the socioeconomic domain, which remain largely unexplored in CCA research, particularly in Indonesia. This thesis will utilise a qualitative approach and multiple case study designs. Three pilot project locations of national adaptation plans are selected as case studies including West Java, East Java, and West Nusa Tenggara. Engaging with small-scale farmers’ perspective on vulnerability will be one of the original contributions of this thesis. This thesis will reveal the complexity, ambiguity and politically contentious nature of vulnerability through an in-depth interview process involving small-scale farmers in the field.
    
    Author: Stanislaus Risadi Apresian (University of Leeds/Parahyangan Catholic University)
  - Stories of heroes and villains: lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for politicizing climate change vulnerability
    
    Narrative inquiries provide us a way into the complexity of climate change: by interrogating existing and telling new stories, we are able to hold open simultaneously a range of interpretations, perspectives, temporalities and also unexplored possibilities. Drawing on insights from posthuman and postcolonial intersectionality, as articulated by ecofeminist and new feminist political ecologies researchers, this paper interrogates the stories and tropes of the COVID-19 pandemic and their links to and relevance for discourses of climate change vulnerability. Both the pandemic and climate change are analyzed as storied events filled with tropes of heroes (in particular white rationalist saviors), villains (especially racialized Others), and victims. It is argued that these stories are shaped by processes of dualistic constructions or, in the words of Val Plumwood, ‘master practices’ (namely backgrounding, radical exclusion, incorporation, objectification, and homogenisation or stereotyping) which construct certain human and non-human beings as vulnerable and deserving of resources of safety, and frame others as villains along colonial tropes of animality.
    Building on this analysis, this paper argues that interrogating these stories allows us, on the one hand, to repolitize vulnerability by linking local, context-specific questions of who is constructed as vulnerable, when, and why to global and historical tapestries of power relations. This can be achieved by drawing on feminist intersectional research and focusing on power relations causing marginalization; interrogating underlying norms and governing institutions shaping the narrative; questioning the underlying assumptions and dominant knowledges inscribed into the stories; and resisting any form of essentialism by taking seriously the agency of human and nonhuman beings framed as vulnerable. On the other hand, such an interrogation can create the basis for new stories that focus on addressing and ending historical systems of oppressions and facilitate broad alliances for political action and solidarity based on common interests.
    
    Author: Magdalena Rodekirchen (University of Manchester)
  - The instrumentalization of vulnerability through the gaze from nowhere
    
    Climate change adaptation is inevitable in order to counter major effects of climate change. Nevertheless, current practices are embedded in a discourse favouring technocratic explanations and responses, concealing that climate change and vulnerability to it are highly political and stem from a politico-economic system that is based on exploitation and profit, condoning amongst others environmental destruction, discrimination and marginalization.
    In response, critical adaptation research has established itself as a field that scrutinizes current practices in adaptation policy and practice. It has done extensive work revealing how current adaptation research and practices depoliticise climate change and vulnerability (Remling 2018; Nightingale et al. 2020), obfuscate how risks are created and why people are vulnerable (O'Brien et al. 2007; Eriksen et al. 2015), mask dynamics to people’s vulnerabilities (Tschakert et al. 2013), lack transformative elements that addresses structural change (Morchain 2018), and re-produce vulnerability as natural and inherent to people affected by climate change (Ribot 2011).
    The question why leading institutions can’t (or don’t want to) escape the trap of essentializing and naturalizing vulnerability remains vague. Although participatory approaches and the inclusion of ‘local’ and ‘indigenous knowledges’ have recently gained popularity to tackle the root causes of vulnerability (IPCC 2014), the paper argues that their integration into the discourse and adaptation practice serves as a complement to physical understandings rather than in their own right to live, reproducing epistemic injustice that undermines historic struggles, future possibilities for self-de- termination and alternative ways of living despite the capitalist mode of exploitation.
    This paper aims at contributing to this gap through the reintroduction of feminist standpoint theory and an appeal to strong objectivity, or strong situatedness in adaptation research. Revisiting Haraway’s metaphor of the god trick, this paper explores how the claim to objectivity in Western thought has constricted adaptation research and practice to consider and effectively implement alternative approaches to vulnerability reduction apart from techno-scientific and economic stances. The paper wants to find out whether the premise of the ability to adapt, that is, non-vulnerability, is used to instrumentalize the vulnerable Other to reproduce the normative power of the Global North and southern elites. It aims at revealing how vulnerability reduction through adaptation has in itself become a political project that “guarantees and refreshes the power of the knower” (Haraway 1988, p. 592).
    To achieve this, the paper delivers a historical outline of how climate ideas and knowledge have emerged, and the over-privilege of physical explanations have been consolidated that led to today’s monolithic understanding of vulnerability that can be healed through technical interventions. The paper then analyses how the objectivity claim – the gaze from nowhere – has influenced the institutionalized understanding of what and who is vulnerable in IPCC working papers. It argues that “the dreams of the perfectly known” (Haraway 1988, p. 589) of Western thought have led adaptation emerge as an unpersonal, innocent endeavour whose application appears to be unquestionable.
    The paper then takes a turn and discusses how strong objectivity may provide a much-needed shift in how adaptation and vulnerability can be conceptualized. It concludes that the de-obfuscation of the gaze from nowhere and making actively visible standpoints on envisioned futures creates strong environments for contestation, critique, affinity, and also responsibility.
    
    Author: Johanna Tunn (Technical University Berlin)
  - Islanding Climate Change Vulnerability
    
    Climate change effects are widely understood to be differentially distributed, both among states, and between social groups. This distribution is explained in the literature through the concept of ‘vulnerability’, and those who are affected are described as ‘the vulnerable’. An indexing project of ranking states according to their vulnerability to climate change has developed in response to calls for knowledge production from the UNFCCC and the IPCC. This positivist approach has had a depoliticising effect, obscuring the actions and choices that create vulnerability, and forcing the concept into a developmental framework.
    This paper uses feminist research on vulnerability, particularly by Judith Butler, to critique climate change vulnerability discourse, and to argue that it is itself vulnerabilising. Feminist theory troubles the logic that invulnerability is the norm, and that vulnerability is a function of poverty or of gender. Invulnerability is instead framed as a masculine, ‘First World’ fantasy that wealth and technology can create safety, and that vulnerability is something inherent to the feminised, racialised ‘other’.
    This theoretical approach then allows a rethinking of the vulnerability of so-called ‘sinking islands’, that uncovers the colonial logics of inherent vulnerability that are repeated in climate change politics. Resistance to these logics has come from islanders themselves, both in the academic work of scholars such as Epeli Hau’ofa and Teresia Teaiwa, and in the activism of groups such as 350 Pacific. Islanding climate change vulnerability therefore involves a critique of the dominant approach, and a reimagining of what it means to be vulnerable through feminist and islander resistance discourses.
    
    Author: Charlotte Weatherill (University of Manchester)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Understanding Foreign Policy making within Area Studies Room 7
  
  Sponsor: Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: MARIANNA Charountaki (University of Lincoln)
  
  Chair: Karen E. Smith (LSE)
  
  Discussant: James Strong (Queen Mary University of London)
  - Institutionalising Foreign policy making between non-state actors: A comparative approach in the EU- Kurdish relations
    
    This article problematizes EU foreign policy towards the Kurds and emphasizes how non-state actors interact with each other. Developments such as the KRG’s own seat in the meetings between the European Union and Baghdad from 2015 onwards; the European Parliament’s support for the Kurdish issue in Turkey in the context of its democratic trajectory and finally the emerging status of the Kurds in Syria are significant. The paper focuses on EU foreign policy through the contested role of EEAS –a relatively new institution that conducts foreign policy. The study argues that EU develops ad hoc relations and employs the case of the KRI. It is noticed that even though EU exerts policies that demonstrate recognition by the international law; on the other it adopts a policy that does not extend the Iraqi frame. Finally, the paper attempts to theorise its implications for the IR discipline as a model that demonstrates interactions between non-state entities.
    
    Author: MARIANNA Charountaki (University of Lincoln)
  - Developing an AU foreign policy: pan-Africanism in international affairs
    
    Foreign policy, traditionally the preserve of the state in guiding international relations, has been dominated by analysis driven largely by western scholars. Over the last decade this has seen some redress, with an increase in contributions from diverse scholars and a burgeoning foreign policy literature, particularly on China and India. Extending beyond the confines of the Westphalia system, scholars point to the foreign policy approach of regional intergovernmental governmental organisations. This includes considerable analysis on the development of the European Union’s (EU) Common Foreign Policy and Security Policy, which sets out the trajectory of the region’s approach to international relations. To the south there is an emerging regional foreign policy approach from Africa, from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to its successor the African Union (AU). In its pursuit of ridding the continent of colonialism, the OAU provided the underlying framework for the AU’s international engagement in the shape of pan-Africanism in carving out a role for an independent and significant Africa on the world stage. Building an active role as a ‘global powerhouse of the future’ is central to the AU’s Agenda 2063, which continues to give emphasis to the idea of pan-Africanism, not just in addressing the internal challenges facing the continent, but as an ‘influential global player and partner’. This research critically examines the development of an AU foreign policy, assessing the impact of pan-Africanism in shaping the region’s approach to international relations and its nascent foreign policy. It begins by investigating the role of the OAU in providing the ideological framework for Africa’s regional foreign policy and how this continues to shape current developments in the AU’s foreign policy development and practice.
    
    Authors: LESLEY MASTERS (University of Derby) , Chris Landsberg (University of Johannesburg)* , Sandile Moloi (University of Johannesburg)*
  - Hybrid Governance and Non-State Actors in Singapore Foreign Policy
    
    Worthington, in his incisive 2003 study of governance in Singapore, identified the executive function of the Singapore state as being much comprised of a far more expansive group of actors than simply the government executive comprised of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Rather, he identified executive power in Singapore as being located within and exercised through a series of overlapping relationships between political elites and a series of core institutions, actors and individuals that are at once separate from but profoundly imbricated with the core political executive. These include elites within the civil service and bureaucracy, members and executives of major statutory boards, government linked companies (GLCs), government holding companies and major enterprises owned indirectly by the government. The ideologies of pragmatic authoritarianism, communitarian values and “meritocratic” elite-control over Singaporean government have been hailed as comprising a Singaporean School of socio-economic and political development worthy of export to other countries, especially in the E and SE Asian Region. Yet, while much has been made of the implications of these forms of governance upon domestic regulation and policy making, comparatively little attention has been paid to their influence on foreign policy. This paper explores the ways in which Singapore’s hybrid form of governance acts to provide unique arenas in which foreign policy is created, refined and contested. Further, it points to the ways in which government linked (yet nominally “arms-length”) bodies operate as vehicles for the pursuit of Singapore’s foreign policy objectives, and in support of both domestic foreign policy legitimacy and positive international perceptions of Singapore’s international positioning and ambitions.
    
    Author: Simon Obendorf (University of Lincoln)
  - Hybrid Warfare and Private Military Companies from Blackwater to Sadat
    
    The meteoric rise of private military companies (PMCs) in the 2000s was brought to the fore by the controversial U.S. contractor Blackwater and its role after the 2003 Iraq invasion. The relatively low-cost, flexible structure of PMCs, as well as the legal vacuum in which they operate, rendered them increasingly useful to governments worldwide, culminating in a proliferation of such entities deployed in high-risk areas. Initially dedicated to limited security provision, PMCs quickly begun to offer a diverse set of “services,” from counterinsurgency to reconnaissance and surveillance, leading analysts to question the continued relevance of conventional armed forces in contemporary conflicts. Nevertheless, the advent of hybrid warfare provided a robust incentive to embed PMCs into state strategic planning. Conventional military forces would no longer simply procure PMC services in an ad-hoc manner, but would, instead, integrate their capabilities in state security doctrines. In this manner, the full spectrum of hybrid warfare options would be made available to policymakers, who could henceforth apply different levels of coercive force seamlessly. By taking a closer look at the case studies of the Russian Wagner group in Crimea and the Turkish Sadat Consultancy in Syria and Libya, the article suggests that far from competing against conventional armies, PMCs are increasingly integrated into state security planning, constituting a core element of hybrid warfare. By lowering the financial and political cost of coercive force application, however, PMCs have an adverse effect on global stability, rendering escalation to conventional, full scale warfare, more likely.
    
    Author: Vassilis Kappis (BUCSIS)
  - The EU as a Benign Hegemon in Relations with Its Neighbours? Between Voluntary Submission and Mitigation of Power in the European Neighbourhood Policy
    
    This paper sheds light on the EU as another distinctive non-state actor through the examination of its ENP. The main aim is to look at mechanisms and practices through which the EU is employing to mitigate the hegemonic nature of the ENP. The paper begins with a contextual introduction to the ENP and its differentiated character. This is followed by a theoretical section, where we examine the conditions of the EU’s dominance over its neighbourhood in the context of external differentiated integration, as well as discussing to what extent the ENP countries voluntarily submit to this dominance. We then explore the mechanisms through which such dominance can be mitigated. In the empirical section, we identify and analyse selected mechanisms and actors through which the EU tries to mitigate its dominance in the neighbourhood. We look at three institutional tools: (1) consultations over the ENP reform; (2) the Interparliamentary Assemblies (i.e. EuroNEST).
    
    Authors: Marcin Zubek (Jagiellonian University) , Magdalena Gora (Jagiellonian University)*
- 11:00 → 12:30
  
  Roundtable / 'Jurisdictional Accumulation: an early modern history of law, empires, and capital' book launch Room 3
  
  This roundtable brings experts in law, history, and historical sociology to discuss Maia Pal's recent book Jurisdictional Accumulation (CUP, 2020). The majority of European early modern empires – the Castilian, French, Dutch, and English/British – developed practices of jurisdictional accumulation, distinguished by the three categories of extensions, transports, and transplants of authority. This book is concerned with various diplomatic and colonial agents which enabled the transports and transplants of sovereign authority. Through historical analyses of ambassadors and consuls in the Mediterranean based on primary and secondary material, and on the empires' Atlantic imperial expansions and conquests, the book makes a major analytical contribution to historical sociology. As an interdisciplinary exercise in conceptual innovation based on a Political Marxist framework and its concept of social property relations, the book goes beyond common binaries in both conventional and critical histories. The new concept of jurisdictional accumulation brings ambassadors, consuls, merchants, and lawyers out of the shadows of empire and onto the main stage of the construction of modern international relations and international law.
  
  Sponsor: Historical Sociology and International Relations Working Group
  
  Chair: Clemens Hoffmann (University of stirling)
  
  Participants: Benno Teschke (University of Sussex) , Maia Pal (Oxford Brookes University) , Kelly-Jo Bluen (LSE) , Julia Costa Lopez (University of Groningen) , Edward Keene (University of Oxford) , Yassin Brunger (Queens University Belfast)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  
  Roundtable / Anti-genderism – from the everyday to the geopolitical Room 2
  
  Increasingly ‘anti-genderism’ (see Ackerly, Friedman, Gopinath, Zalewski 2019) has emerged as a key rallying cry in global politics. A rejection of, and reaction against, feminism and so-called ‘gender ideology’ acts as an ideational linchpin across multiple sites of politics, from internet chatrooms to the rhetoric of world leaders. This roundtable will explore how homophobia, racism and misogyny operate in a holistic entanglement within these spaces and discourses and constitute a core ideological force in contemporary far right populism from the so-called fringes, to the so-called mainstream of political debates. By exploring abortion politics, violent anti-feminism, and the leadership of figures such as Trump, Orbán, Bolsonaro, Duda and others and it seeks to unpack the different ways that anti-genderism operates within and circles through political movements, ideologies, and ideas such as nationalism, populism, and extremism.
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Chair: Ali Bilgic (Loughborough University)
  
  Participants: Pragya Rai (Loughborough University) , Catarina Kinnvall (Lund University) , Clara Eroukhmanoff (LSBU) , Khushi Singh Rathore (Jawaharlal Nehru University) , Hannah Partis-Jennings (Loughborough University) , Annika Bergman Rosamond (Lund University)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / Human Rights and Art: Understanding Violations and Facilitating Change Room 9
  
  Sponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: Eliza Garnsey (University of Cambridge)
  
  Chair: Elspeth Van Veeren (University of Bristol)
  - In the Wake of Destruction: Art in the Aftermath of Mexico City’s 2019 Feminist Protests
    
    In August 2019, thousands of women took to the streets of Mexico City in several massive demonstrations to protest the increasing wave of gender-based violence washing across the country. What characterized the demonstrations was rage, expressed in part through unprecedented damage to public space and property. The media, politicians, and the public at large were quick to condemn the protests and their fallout, and particularly the fact that it was women who were responsible. But, as this paper argues, the protests did not simply lead to destruction. In the months following the protest they also enabled and inspired the creation of novel initiatives and collective projects that have sought to reshape public spaces and to change the experience of women living in the country’s capital. Through an analysis of some of the most iconic artistic initiatives and projects – ranging from the collective photographic project Trinchera in the city’s subways to the auction of historical paintings seized and repainted by feminist collectives that occupied the Human Rights Commission building in Mexico City – I argue that disruptions of the everyday flow of Mexico City and the damage to public spaces served as a controversial but creative form of politicization and political mobilization.
    
    Keywords: Mexico, gender-based violence, protest, art, political mobilization.
    
    Bio: Tania Islas Weinstein is assistant professor in the Political Science Department at McGill University. Her teaching and research are dedicated to analyzing the intersections between art and politics, with a primary geographical focus on Latin America.
    
    Author: Tania Islas Weinstein (McGill University)
  - Art as Guarantees non Repetition: Examples from Colombia
    
    Guarantees of non repetition are an integral part of reparation strategies intended to impact the whole community rather than only specific victims. Primarily conceived as structural or policy measures aimed to prevent similar violations to happen again, the practice has expanded beyond legislative and institutional reform to also include alternative approaches, as the use of artbased interventions in the form of monuments or memorials. The Colombian case is a good example of such tendency.
    
    The final peace agreement, signed in 2016 between the Colombian government and the former guerrilla FARC-EP, included a provision for constructing three different monuments using the weaponry turned over by the rebel group. This paper explores the contrasting reparative performance as guarantees of non repetition of the two monuments completed so far, analysing how aesthetic considerations could shape the political motivations and social reception of these art works which were vaguely conceived by the peace agreement.
    
    Keywords: Colombia, art, non-repetition, reparations, monuments.
    
    Bio: Tatiana Fernández-Maya is a PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales. She has a Bachelor in philosophy and a master's degree in Human Rights. Before starting her PhD in Australia, Tatiana worked with Colombian victims, mainly in the area of collective memory and access to reparations.
    
    Author: Tatiana Fernández-Maya (University of New South Wales)
  - Holding Cultural Institutions Accountable
    
    How can artistic activism bring to the fore cases of human rights violations, state violence, and war profiteering? And how can activists’ tactics succeed in raising public awareness by re-enacting ‘the power of the people’? The recent renaissance of artistic activism in a global context evinces interventions that set out to hold museums, institutions, and non-profit organisations accountable. They also allude to a broader crisis of legitimacy that cultural institutions are faced with today. This paper will present such a case study of artistic activism that transpired at the Whitney Museum during 2019 after the revelation that the vice-chairman of the museum’s Board of Trustees was also the owner of a company that manufactures military and law enforcement supplies. In fact, as it was soon made public, the company’s tear gas canisters had been used against civilians in fourteen countries, including the United States. The Whitney staff, numerous activist groups, grassroots collectives, artists, theorists, and critics launched a campaign in response to the museum board’s complicity in patterns of artwashing, state violence, and toxic sponsorship. By presenting the diversity of tactics that were deployed, including open letters, protests, boycotts, and agitational unsanctioned interventions, it will become evident that these multiple stakeholders aspired to prefigure a model of museum governance that is transparent and accountable to the communities it is supposed to serve.
    
    Keywords: artistic activism, institutions, Whitney Museum, state violence, governance.
    
    Bio: Konstantinos Pittas is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. His thesis focuses on cultural institutions as a model for the spatialisation of democratic politics and for the inscription of a plethora of political claims. His research has been supported by the Cambridge Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC- DTP), the Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust, and the Onassis Foundation.
    
    Author: Konstantinos Pittas (University of Cambridge)
  - The Right(s) to Remain: Art, Asylum, and Political Representation in Australia
    
    Australia’s treatment of people seeking asylum and refugees is widely criticised by the international community as violating international human rights and humanitarian laws and norms. In the absence of state protection, artistic representation becomes an important intervention into the practices and narratives surrounding Australia’s treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.
    
    In this paper, I explore Hoda Afshar’s video artwork Remain (2018) which documents the experiences and struggles of a group of stateless men who have been left to languish on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, after the Australian government closed its Manus Regional Processing Centre in 2017. Remain is one of the only available avenues open to the men to share their stories and to communicate the harm caused by national policy and practices. I argue that the artistic representation of Remain becomes a crucial form of political representation; political representation which would not otherwise be possible.
    
    Keywords: Human rights, art, Australia, political representation, refugees.
    
    Bio: Eliza Garnsey is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in International Relations at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on art and visual culture in international relations and world politics, particularly in relation to human rights, transitional justice, and conflict.
    
    Author: Eliza Garnsey (University of Cambridge)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / Metaphors in International Security Room 8
  
  Sponsor: Interpretivism in International Relations Working Group
  
  Conveners: Emil Archambault (School of Government and International Affairs, University of Durham) , Johanna Rodehau-Noack (London School of Economics and Political Science)
  
  Chair: Natalie Jester (University of Gloucestershire)
  - War as Sport: Fairness, Reciprocity, and Skill in Contemporary War
    
    This presentation investigates the role of sport metaphors in the theorisation of warfare and its role in International Relations. The analogy of war to bloody versions of sports and games has a long history, an oft-cited example being Clausewitz’s conception of war as two wrestlers seeking to “overthrow” each other. In recent years, metaphors of war as sporting events have been marshalled among others to argue for a strictly reciprocal conception of war, to the exclusion of targeted killing and radically asymmetrical violence. Yet, the metaphorical sportiveness of war relies on a multiplicity of metaphors, which are often contradictory and call forth opposing systems of norms and values. One major division among such metaphors lies between metaphors of sport as a reciprocal, fair game (such as wrestling), and of sport as a game of skill (such as hunting). This presentation will provide a summary of these two approaches to metaphors of sport and war, with an emphasis on their parallel developments and historical legacies. In the second part, I will analyse the impact of each approach on contemporary conceptions of warfare, and how metaphors of sporting war serve to impose a narrow definition of war which normatively constrains strategic thinking.
    
    Author: Emil Archambault (School of Government and International Affairs, University of Durham)
  - War as Disease: Bio-medical Metaphors in Prevention Discourse
    
    Previous research has examined bio-medical metaphors in discourses on military intervention, counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism. Starting from the observation that such metaphors also occur in the contemporary conflict prevention discourse, this article inquires into their intellectual origins and implications for the understanding of war and prevention. Drawing on archival analysis, it finds that they manifest in two ways in prevention discourse. In the cataclysmic notion, war is likened to a plague. This metaphor was popularised by Christian pacifists in the 19th century and carried forth into 20th century prevention documents. The more recent risk-factor notion is couched in terms of enabling conditions for threats to the body politic. By engaging imagery on immunity and public health, it draws parallels between social and political organisation and functions of the body. The article argues that while both notions of bio-medical metaphors of war in conflict prevention discourse are firmly rooted in modernist thinking, this intellectual legacy manifests differently. The cataclysmic notion associates war and disease with barbarism and thus paints prevention as a civilisational objective. The risk-factor notion, on the other hand, represents war as a technico-scientific problem and thus shifts the focus towards governing and controlling war through knowledge and technology.
    
    Author: Johanna Rodehau-Noack (London School of Economics and Political Science)
  - ‘Poppy War’: Military-masculine Hierarchies, Ontological Insecurity and Vicarious Identification during the 2016 FIFA Poppy Controversy
    
    Scholarship in Feminist sociology and IR has emphasised that late-modern social structures are hierarchically-ordered along gendered lines. This is particularly evident in the social distinctions drawn between military and sporting subjectivities. While it is common for societies to refer to both subjects and their ostensible service to the nation as heroic, discursive frameworks emphasise that sporting subjects and their heroisms are hierarchically-inferior to the ‘real heroes’: the figure of the liberal masculinised warrior. While such distinctions are not immutable, the conditions under which they might transmogrify remain underexplored. In this paper, I argue that moments of ontological insecurity are instances in which such distinctions might be temporarily suspended. Using the case of FIFA’s controversial refusal in 2016 to allow the English men’s football team to wear kits adorned with red Poppy emblems associated with British war commemoration, I argue that the episode gave expression to broader anxieties expressed in Britain’s decision to leave the European Union and reassert itself on the global stage, leading to media framings of the controversy as a metaphorical war, structured along the lines of a Lacanian fantasy. Focusing on the discursive and aesthetic aspects of press coverage, I argue that positioning England footballers as vicarious proxies for the nation in a ‘war’ with FIFA was enabled by the collapsing of distinctions of sporting and military hierarchies, with soldiers discursively positioned using militarised terminology usually reserved for military veterans, with broader implications for the integrity of ‘civilian’ and ‘military’ subjectivities.
    
    Author: Joseph Haigh (University of Warwick)
  - Seeing like a Computer: Cybernetic Metaphors and their Impact on Political and Ethical Practices Today
    
    Today’s hype about Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a panacea for the world’s ills assumes that the world and its components, including humans, are just ‘like’ computers. Such cybernetic metaphors shape ideas about the world and its workings – whether that is the human brain as a computer, or society as a system of feedback loops. Drawing metaphorically on our latest creative in(ter)ventions to make sense of the world has a long history, with theories of probability and statistics casting a long shadow from early modernity to today. With a frame of reference that in its theoretical essence started as a gambler’s dispute in 1664, and which has become the substrate of our present-day rationality, how is the world, and our idea of agency, shaped when read through the logic of statistical computation? What are the political and ethical consequences of conceiving of humans / world in this way? How are visions for the future shaped, when the cybernetic condition is epitomised in the ethos of Silicon Valley? This paper explores the logical foundations of seeing the world and its constitutive elements like a computer and traces the deeply embedded cybernetic ideas of the world as a distinct political project of modernity.
    
    Author: Elke Schwarz (Queen Mary, University of London)
  - Simple slogans are deep: Nation-branding and the legitimation of political regimes
    
    Over the past twenty years, nation-branding has become a widespread international practice. Governments around the world, regardless of their democratic credentials and level of socio-economic development, have pursued similar sets of ‘branding practices’ to present themselves and their state in a favourable light. Across contexts, the pool of common activities includes seemingly ‘cosmetic’ doings such as the development of tourism slogans or the hosting of international events, as well as more ‘institutionalised’ doings such as the development of new government branches, re-modelling cityscapes, or re-telling national pasts and futures. Combined, these doings have lasting effects on their surroundings as they monopolize political discourse and mould material environments.
    
    Regardless of its widespread use, nation-branding remains marginalized in critical international relations and politics research, where it is commonly understood as a vain, superficial selling technique with little political salience. If we look from the ground up, however, an alternative interpretation emerges as statements and practices that may look like superficial slogans are deeply involved in the imagination, actualization and legitimation of political regimes. To show this, we draw on years of fieldwork conducted on practices of nation-branding in three authoritarian regimes: Kazakhstan, Qatar and Thailand. In particular, we trace how national brands are made and how they seek to stabilize politicized interpretations of identity as inevitable, legitimate and true. Our analysis builds on and extends recent debates in IR, politics and political geography about nation-branding’s political undercurrents, and adds further empirical evidence to the theoretical claim that political orders are practical achievements based on shared conceptions of who we are. In our increasingly image-obsessed and attention-seeking world, branding practices do not passively promote given political entities; they bring them into being. By simplifying complex political narratives and then claiming that they reflect how a state ‘really is’, nation-branding practices de-politicise their own production process, normalise their suggested interpretation of reality, and thus contribute to legitimate the way society and power relations are currently organised.
    
    Authors: Desatova Petra (University of Copenhagen) , Kristin Eggeling (Copenhagen University)*
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / New approaches to the global dimensions of (local) politics and conflict in Africa Room 1
  
  Sponsor: Africa and International Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: AISG Working group
  
  Chair: Peter Brett (Politics and International Relations - Queen Mary)
  - Rethinking the rationality behind counterterrorism: A Qualitative Case study of Boko Haram in Nigeria
    
    Over the last decade, Nigeria have been terrorised by Boko Haram whose wanton destruction of lives and properties have seen a severe response by the Nigerian government. Central to this concern is the international communities’ response in supporting the Nigerian government in suppressing Boko Haram as seen in the United States delayed supply of the relevant munitions to combat the terrorist group. There also seems to be paucity of research that have sought to explore perceptions concerning the rationality behind counterterrorism. The study relied on a qualitative method and semi-structured interview comprising 53 participants recruited from Lagos states in Nigeria. Informed by the principles of thematic analysis and Weber’s formal rationality the study found that there was a perceived notion that the Nigerian counterterrorism response was one devoid of consideration to the root causes and as such evoking a sense of irrationality behind counterterrorism. The study recommends a context-specific outlook on some of the drivers of the conflict in order to reduce terrorism.
    
    Author: Tarela Juliet Ike (Teesside University )
  - FROM KEEPING TO MAKING AT TWO AFRICAN GATES: THE INTERNATIONAL POLITICS OF AIRPORTS IN ETHIOPIA AND GHANA
    
    This article explores Africa’s shifting international relations through the study of two important international gateways to the continent: Kotoka International Airport in Accra and Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa. Case studies examining the history and development of both airports find these gates represent a fruitful but neglected vantage point for understanding Africa’s shifting connections to, and impact upon, the wider world. Theoretically, whilst the article affirms the value of using such critical nodal points – or ‘gates’ – to understand the international dimensions of African politics, it also highlights the limits of extant concepts such as ‘gatekeeping’ and the typology of the ‘gatekeeper state’. The article instead advances an alternative approach which it calls 'gatemaking' which can enhance our understanding of Africa’s international relations by showing how gates (such as airports) help to make Africa’s place in the world, rather than simply being sites through which African politics is impacted by its international position (as in the gatekeeper model). Evident to different degrees in both airports, this concept foregrounds Africa as a place which both originates and shapes key dimensions of the international, making contributions to debates in African studies as well as critical approaches to IR.
    
    Author: Joanne Tomkinson (SOAS, University of London)
  - What determines Trust in Post-Conflict Police? Evidence from Latin American and African countries
    
    The police are considered the most visible arm of the government, responsible for law enforcement and establishing security and order for citizen (Cao and Zhao 2005). Yet especially after violent conflict the police are often not trusted (anymore): during war and political conflict, formal and capable security institutions are often destroyed, and in some cases the police are even perpetrators of violence against civilians themselves. Previous research on individual post-conflict countries has found that unlawful behaviour toward citizens has a negative effect on trust in police, while inclusive and accessible services have a positive effect. However, these findings have not been tested on a large-scale, comparative, and cross-area sample. Taking survey data from eleven African and nine Latin American post-conflict countries, we examine factors that determine trust in police in these countries. We find that across different post-conflict countries in both continents, unlawful behaviour toward citizens is a very strong predictor of a lack of trust in police. In addition, we also find that general trust and satisfaction in other democratic institutions is also strongly correlated with trust in the police. Interestingly, factors such as insecurity in the neighbourhood do only determine trust in police in Latin American post-conflict countries, but not in African post-conflict countries. Accessibility of police services was not significant across all countries. Our findings make an important contribution to existing research on police and police reform in post-conflict countries, and give important indications for practitioners of police reform.
    
    Authors: Nadine Ansorg (University of Kent) , Irrazabal Lobos (University of Kent)
  - Using Participatory Video as a Tool for Knowledge Production: Women and Oil Conflict in the Niger Delta
    
    In thinking about the extent to which participatory methodologies opens up new insights and facilitates the processes of co-production of knowledge at the local level, my work highlights that although leadership happens everywhere, for most of the women in the Niger Delta it poses a major challenge. It is one where the toxic model of patriarchy and associated inequalities come to play. For example, even in communities where women are represented on the Community Development Committees (CDC), the reality is that such a leadership is in name only, women leaders are not empowered or given a voice in charting the development agendas of most of the communities. Young women in the communities I engaged with are asking for empowerment and also roles in the discussions in conflict settings. They argue for equal participation on a level platform being mothers, wives, sisters and as daughters. In particular issues such as fear, poverty, violence against women and girls, inequalities, relegation of women, as well as resource related environmental issues are depicted using the women’s own voices. Perhaps more leadership opportunities for women in the region could lead to changes in personal and collective values and also behaviour towards improving and entrenching nonviolence in addressing the Niger Delta issues. In this project, I used participatory videos to document local women’s experiences, needs and hopes from their own perspectives in relation to developmental issues and conflict. This captured an ‘insider view’ in a lively way that is accessible to diverse audiences.
    
    Author: Zainab Mai-Bornu (Coventry University)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / Political mobilisation, youth and women’s activism and new democratic politics in the southern Mediterranean, Middle East and its Diasporas Room 7
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Convener: Jessica Northey (Coventry University)
  
  Chair: Omer Tekdemir (Coventry University )
  
  Discussant: Zahia Smail Salhi (Manchester University )
  - Political Engagement of Algerian Women in the Diaspora during the Hirak Movement
    
    This paper is situated in a wider discussion around the role of diaspora groups in political and social change. Since 2018, several social mobilisation movements have taken places in MENA countries such as Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan and Algeria. In the Algerian context, this movement became known as the Hirak. Women were strongly present in these movements as they participated effectively in organising and communicating the demands of protesters. Women’s participation in these widely popular movements is a great testimony challenging the stereotypical ‘victim, oppressed, having little agency’ representation of women in the Muslim and Arab world. Women in the diaspora participated in the Hirak by taking part in the protests and volunteering to organise them. This paper discusses the political agency of Algerian women in the UK diaspora, and how the spaces of the Hirak protests were used to re(create) an imagined Algeria in the UK, I also discuss transnational citizenship for migrant women and questions of belonging and integration in the UK.
    
    Author: Meryem Abdelhafid ( Coventry University)
  - Imagining a new political space: the power of youth and peaceful protest in Algeria
    
    Throughout 2019 and up until Covid-19 confinement, led predominantly by young people, Algerians peacefully mobilised on an unprecedented scale for democracy. Known as the Hirak, massive weekly marches of millions led to President Bouteflika standing down, politicians and businessmen being tried for corruption. Largely ignored in the West, this phenomenal mobilisation led to an unthinkable challenge to the hegemony of the regime and to a condemnation of structural inequalities facing Algerian youth. To understand these transformative protests, the paper first explores the key political developments and demands of the movement, followed secondly, by the contentious politics and repertoires of action that emerged, drawing on Asef Bayat’s concept of non-movements. What inspired these actions; how similar are they to other movements in the region; and have they inspired beyond their borders? Lastly, drawing on postcolonial writers as Edouard Glissant, what lessons are there for EU and Mediterranean states and societies in respect to the policies that frame the region? How can the mobilisations of 2019 contribute to the striving for a common political space in the Mediterranean, based on respect, exchange and solidarity?
    
    Authors: Jessica Northey (Coventry University) , Adel Chiheb (Jijel University Algeria)
  - Urban Political Mobilisation and Activating Amman’s Public Space in Pursuit of a Just City
    
    The political and urban landscape of Amman calls for greater attention towards (re)envisioning urban discourse and (re)shaping urban policies that are inclusive to its young and diverse demographic. This paper presents the lived experiences of young people (aged 18-35) in Amman in response to the tightening grip of urban governance and issues surrounding systemic processes and tokenistic practices of participation. It presents youth participant perspectives on how urban public space can serve as a platform for democratic transformation, while taking into account the capacity for public space to hinder or contribute to building social cohesion and inclusion, as it intersects with notions of identity, belonging and active urban citizenship. Drawing from constructivist approaches, this paper argues that mobilizing youth in urban politics and activating the public space as a platform for social, cultural and political activity is instrumental for shaping inclusive planning processes and fostering democratic transformation. This argument highlights the necessity for such mechanisms to be adopted by urban governance structures, such as Greater Amman Municipality, in support of their responsibility and capacity to plan, produce and manage inclusive public space. This approach is fundamental to building channels of collaboration and trust between governance structures and city inhabitants, which are essential to the foundations of a Just City.
    
    Author: Rana Aytug (Coventry University)
  - Migration and social transformation: Algerian Diaspora Responses to COVID19
    
    Migration and social transformation: Algerian Diaspora Responses to COVID19
    
    Author: Latefa Guemar (University of East London)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / Securitisation of migrants and refugees in Europe from a political and ethical point of view Room 5
  
  Sponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group
  
  Convener: Christian Kaunert (University of South Wales)
  
  Chair: Christian Kaunert (University of South Wales)
  - Is Covid-19 a Critical Juncture in International Migration Governance?
    
    Covid-19 has triggered an unprecedented global health crisis in 2020. While the pandemic is still ongoing, from its very beginning public discourses in various global locations have reiterated that there is no return to what was known as “normal,” that the “new normal” is abnormality and that the world will evolve as a completely different place after COVID-19. Such discourses allude to what historical institutionalists have long considered a “critical juncture,” a crucial period of time of extreme uncertainty that profoundly changes political, social and economic structures and sets political relationships on paths they have not been before. The authors of this paper question whether Covid-19 is indeed such a critical juncture or is a period of suspension when long-term trends continue to be maintained? Based on a comparison of the cases of Bulgaria, Lebanon and Mexico, the authors hypothesize that COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated the use of control mechanisms to enhance previously existing governing patterns but has not have a unified impact. It has coincided with other contingent events in each case: the opening of borders for Syrian refugees by Turkey in the Bulgarian case, the 2019 US-Mexico treaty in the Mexican case, and the financial meltdown and the Beirut Blasts in the Lebanese case. Together, these contingent events have shaped the discourses and practices that have set policy responses towards paths that are specific to each case.
    
    Authors: Maria Koinova (University of Warwick) , Marianne H Marchand (University of Americas, Puebla)* , Fakhoury Tamirace (Sciences Po/Lebanese American University)*
  - The securitisation of COVID-19 pandemic - Human biosecurity, new nationalisms and the challenges to EU migration agenda
    
    Since the declaration of COVID-19 pandemic, states have been invoking the need of exceptional measures to deal with exceptional circumstances, arguing that the pandemic poses an existential threat to their community.
    Since January 2019, the securitisation of COVID-19 speech has been used as an argument and a tool to foster stronger measures against migrants, and it has been deepening populist and right-wing speeches in Europe and in the United States.
    Initially by othering COVID-19 as the “Chinese Virus” or the “Virus from China”, many world leaders tried to dissociate themselves in a move to politically blame and shame China.
    The handling of global health intertwined with the fracturing international migration governance has raised the need to further investigate to what extent will the securitization of the pandemic will affect the migration agenda and how the declaration of human biosecurity emergency may deepen the idea of borders as security threat.
    Using a securitisation theory lens, this paper seeks to understand how the biosecurity claim, such as the many times summoned argument of the need to “flatten the epidemic curve”, is being used to close borders and how it will ultimately impact on the international migration management.
    
    Authors: Joana Deus Pereira (University of South Wales) , Christian Kaunert (University of South Wales)*
  - Whose security? EU’s biometricised governance regime
    
    The heightened securitisation of migration coupled and partly executed by a biometricised governance regime constitute some of the fundamental characteristics of EU border policies. Indicatively, signs of border control biometricisation can be detected within the Eurodac system and the biometric passports. The inclusion of biometric technology in passports redefines and decisively influences the nature of migration controls. Additionally, this highly technologised hegemonic routinised practices have been normalised. The body and the human characteristics are in the disposal of police and border authorities, without the existence of criminal offense. The usage of biometric technology as conceived by the EU, the authorities and a big fraction of the society, is a safe and effective medium for ensuring security. So, the man becomes an indispensable tool for the prevalence of security and legal certainty, that essentially it is supposed to concern him. Nevertheless, he forgoes his own security, as he becomes a commodity as an information. Concomitantly, this ‘governmentality of unease’ (Bigo 2002) is nurtured by both the public and the private sector, whereby accountability issues arise. The identification and categorisation of population groups, along with data collection and surveillance points to Foucault’s governmentality and biopolitics.
    Within this context, this paper aims to explore and inquire into the usage of biometric technology as a normal, safe and effective medium for ensuring security and borders. Looking at biometricisation as part and parcel of a “flourishing market” (Rodier, 2012: 13) where migratory flows are controlled through border checks, supervision and other security measures, it will seek to answer the following two key questions: whose security is protected? And how does a market-oriented reading of this securitised context (i.e., border management defined by rational, economic goals or agendas) fit in the anthropocene?
    
    Authors: FOTEINI KALANTZI (University of Oxford) , Myriam Fotou (University of Leicester)
  - Securitising Refugees in the UK: the 1930s and 40s
    
    Securitising Refugees in the UK: the 1930s and 40s
    
    Author: Andrea Hammel (Aberystwyth University)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / Something old something new: conceptual thinking as a way to push IR intellectual boundaries Room 6
  
  Sponsor: International Relations as a Social Science Working Group
  
  Convener: Audrey Alejandro (London School of Economics and Political Science)
  
  Chair: Alexander Hoseason (Aston University)
  - Concepts as Discursive Constructs in International Studies: The Case of Sharp Power
    
    Concepts in international studies are subject to constant reformulations, reinterpretations, and rearticulations. Being a central concept in the discipline, analytical inquiries about power have produced a multiplicity of conceptual innovations. The latest conceptual addition to the power literature is ‘sharp power’. Sharp power was first introduced in 2017 by a report of an American institute. It has been embraced and employed quite extensively since then. This paper contends that the sharp power concept is a discursive construct devised and propounded for certain practical/strategic objectives. First, state and non-state actors in the West, specifically the US, that perceive a resurgent Russia and an emergent China as threats to the interests of the West/the US are prone to reconceive and recast influence attempts of these states in certain terms. Second, Western/the US states and societies have been subject to influence attempts by adversarial actors in degree, scope, frequency, and efficacy arguably not seen before. Accordingly, this unprecedented situation has called for novel definitions to make sense of it. Third, by the sharp power concept, public diplomacy practices of adversarial political actors, mainly Russia and China, are represented in a negative fashion, and distinguished from and contrasted with the ‘soft’ public diplomacy practices of the West/the US.
    
    Author: Eyup Ersoy (Ahi Evran University)
  - World-making as an intellectual practice: multiplying the ontologies of the international by thinking through contemplative activism
    
    This paper aims to decenter the dominance of the ‘One World’ ontology that is underlying much of the thinking and doing of IR. Such a single-reality perspective underpinning many familiar Western discourses of science is beginning to be challenged in the discipline, as scholars aim to disrupt the coloniality of the Western ontology of ‘one nature’ and ‘many cultures’. Much of this decentering work draws on world-making practices in non-dominant worlds. This paper aims to expand this focus, by taking in alternative world-making practices that challenge the singe-world reality from within the dominant world, the ‘North’. Doing so not only avoids reestablishing familiar dualist and colonial boundaries of knowledge that locate strangeness and other ontologies in faraway and distant places but also draws our attention to the fact that IR would be better off not locating multiple ontologies geopolitically to begin with. The different worlds to which it needs to become attuned instead are generated through our intellectual encounters with the ‘fields’ we inhabit and/or study. IR thus needs to entertain a ‘world of many worlds’ as a theoretical engagement. The paper illustrates these points by drawing on conceptualizations of politics and subjectivity that follow from world-making practices of contemplative activists in Northern Europe. It argues that world-making as an intellectual practice allows the discipline to take non-scientific, non-dualist perspectives seriously as one possible way of doing IR differently. Ultimately, what (international) politics or subjectivity is needs to be ontologically plural as part of our research. It is by entertaining that possibility in and as our own intellectual praxis that the ontologies of international politics can actually be multiplied, and we can begin to undo the ‘One World’ world.
    
    Author: Suzanne Klein Schaarsberg (Aberystwyth University)
  - Bringing Gramsci back in: hegemony and the sociology of IR
    
    Despite decades of interest relating to issues of disciplinary hierarchy and dominance, the sociology of IR operates with a conceptually limited understanding of hegemony.
    
    It is a subfield that employs a simplified theoretical framework associated with hegemony, which is narrowed to a mere acknowledgment of consent, as a prevalent element in maintaining a hegemonic disciplinary order. Despite frequent references to Gramsci and Cox, the concept is stripped from its dialectical essence and neglected its initial theoretical context. This theoretical neglection leads to a situation in which the sociology of IR is not able to effectively identify patterns of consent within the discipline and proclaims that, despite the material predominance of the US IR community, ideationally the discipline is non-hegemonic.
    
    Thus, the paper proposes «bringing back» Gramsci and neo-Gramscianism to the sociology of IR. It seeks to revisit possible avenues for a critical theoretical transfer, and to assess the possibility of conceptualizing actors and dynamics associated with the production and maintenance of the disciplinary hegemony. Specifically, it draws attention to several features of hegemony, such as its duality, domestic origin, transnational essence, and heterogeneous character. Eventually, it seeks to comprehend a possible heuristic value of such notions as intellectuals and passive revolution, associated with the Gramscian and neo-Gramscian understanding of hegemony
    
    Author: Artsiom Sidarchuk (University of Milan)
  - Forgetting International Relations? Multiplicity, New Medievalism and the Challenge of Re-Grounding IR and ‘the International’
    
    Political research suffers from intradisciplinary fragmentation (Aris, 2020). Particularly, it applies to International Relations (IR) which scope is entangled in ever-increasing number of agendas and designs (Baele and Bettiza, 2020) which makes finding the common ground for IR scholars impossible (Sylvester, 2007; 2013). A solution to this issue is proposed by the idea of multiplicity (Rosenberg, 2016) that as an ontological claim calls for re-grounding IR to release it from political science and, also, to provide better empirical grounding for ‘the international’ as the basic concept of the area. That is necessary due to the domination of state-based political relations in IR agenda which limits its true potential. (Rosenberg, 2016). This article aims at accelerating the debate on IR disciplinary status and ontological entanglement through analyzing another puzzling idea – new medievalism – against multiplicity. Namely, multiplicity is accused of ‘break into the past’ (Peltonen, 2018), embodied by the state-based Westphalian model, while new medievalism indeed uses ‘historical analogy’ to capture the heterogeneity of actors in contemporary world politics (Bull, 2002). Methodologically, the analysis is based on critical exchange between chosen ideas. Basing on findings, the paper elaborates the scenario of re-grounding IR to ensure that it will be well-equipped in the face of global challenges.
    
    Author: Aleksandra Spalińska (University of Warsaw)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  
  Roundtable / Understanding Impact in International Peace and Security Room 4
  
  ‘Impact’ has become a major and unmissable part of the research landscape. Worth 25% of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 evaluation for universities, it also presents a number of questions for practitioners with whom university researchers engage and who face requests to assist with gathering evidence and developing research engagement. The relationship between universities and the range of practitioners with whom they work (whether from the policy, creative and cultural, business, third or other sectors) is crucial to developing world class research and impact — 4* impact, in terms of the REF. At the boundaries of law and politics, there may be plentiful opportunities for research to benefit from engagement with practitioners and for research to make a difference. This roundtable creates a flexible and adaptable opportunity for university researchers and for practitioners to come together to explore where, how and why research at the nexus of international law and international politics have impact, including in light of, but far from limited to, REF2021. The proposed roundtable follows a highly successful workshop organised jointly by the British International Studies Association Working Group on International Law and Politics and by the School of Security Studies, King’s College London — and is open again to anything reflected on the spectrum from art to zoology, and is open to all ideas relating to relevant research impact.
  
  Sponsor: International Law and Politics Working Group
  
  Chair: Andrea Birdsall (University of Edinburgh)
  
  Participants: David Bicknell (King's College London) , Steven Haines (University of Greenwich) , James Gow (King's College London) , Rachel Kerr (King's College London) , Henry Lovat (University of Glasgow)
- 12:30 → 14:00
  
  Conference event / Exhibitor Hall Conference Website
- 12:30 → 14:00
  Panel / Global Ethics in a Pluralist World Room 10
  
  Sponsor: Ethics and World Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: Anthony Lang, Jr (University of St Andrews)
  
  Chair: Toni Erskine (Australian National University)
  - Global Political Animals: What does Aristotle have to tell us about universalism
    
    Aristotle defined human beings as political animals. This arises from his classification of humans as distinctive because they 1) use rationality; and 2) engage in meaningful political behaviour. He is making a universal claim about the human condition, one that applies across all times and spaces. While his scientific support on some elements of this classification is flawed, the fundamental point remains. This paper asks if Aristotle’s claim about being a political animal can help to orient us to a set of universal values. For Aristotle, these values created the virtues, both intellectual and moral, which should guide our lives. I develop his virtues in conversation with other virtue ethicists to see if his ideas can help speak to issues in the use of force, particularly in contemporary uses of force in the cyber realm.
    
    Author: Anthony Lang (University of St Andrews)
  - “Only Logical Universals: Max Weber’s Advice on Living in a Disenchanted World
    
    The backdrop of Max Weber’s well-known lectures on science and politics is the process by which the world becomes “disenchanted,” literally de-magic-ified. Among other things, this means that the world loses whatever intrinsic moral meaning it may once have carried, leaving us with a clash of putatively universal value-claims that cannot be resolved in a globally compelling manner. The irony of this disenchanted condition is that we are left with universals that cannot actually function as universals — we cannot simply abandon them, but we cannot simply affirm them either. Weber’s solution is a pragmatic one, relying on the tension between these formally universal ethical imperatives and the practical necessities of acting in the world (particularly the practical requisites of governing) to prevent terrible harms from occurring. This in turn demands a novel grammar of political contestation, and a robust pluralism that stands in continual need of nurturing (even, and perhaps especially, by social scientists), in order that social relations may continue in the absence of any overarching normative consensus.
    
    Author: Patrick Jackson (American University)
  - Fanon, Relationality, and Postcolonial Humanism
    
    This paper argues that universal values and principles can exist in a contemporary global context, but universalist projects are hindered and corrupted by relationality. To give an example the paper begins by briefly highlighting the constructed (biological and moral) relationality in Kant’s anthropology, which undermines the universalist claims and practice of his cosmopolitan ideas. Such attempts at defining universalism were viewed with suspicion by postcolonial thinker Frantz Fanon, not only for obscuring the racist relationalities that underpinned such universalism, but also for imposing a hegemony of ideas in the name of progress. Rather than accept relativism in the place of universalism, though, Fanon argued for a postcolonial humanism which centres subjectivity and recognition of difference as a universal trait. However, his ideas still contain a tension between breaking the chain of relationality while also calling for recognition of difference. His ideas were still rooted in modernity and focused on social relationality. Finally, then, the paper explores the omissions in Fanon’s thought, chiefly a non-social or non-materialist relationality, drawing from indigenous and theological perspectives to consider guesthood as a possible foundation for some universal values.
    
    Author: Jasmine Gani (University of St Andrews)
  - Machiavelli, Carr and the Impure Ethics of Realism in The Twenty Years’ Crisis
    
    This paper has two aims: first, to establish the nature of the relationship between Machiavelli and E.H. Carr; secondly, to assess Morgenthau’s claim that the Machiavellian perspective as employed by Carr leaves a theorist ‘philosophically ill-equipped’ to think ethically about IR. The article explores the parallels and affinities in their works and concludes that Carr was perhaps more Machiavellian than he realised or was willing to admit, and that as such, he may – contra Morgenthau - be more philosophically well-equipped to deal with the question of the relationship between politics and ethics than critics have recognised – a ‘dangerous’ Machiavelli, but not a ‘disastrous’ one. Reading these authors in parallel allows us to gain a more developed sense of how both both deal with the vexed relationship of ethics to politics. Machiavelli does not concentrate primarily on IR, what he does say suggests that he thinks international politics are inherently unstable and therefore without any chance of improvement politically or ethically. His importance lies in demonstrating the possibility of a political ethics and the articulation of such an ethic applied to domestic politics, which, with some adjustments, could be made to serve as the basis for a realist international ethics. Carr's close adherence to Machiavelli's formula suggests that this was also his template – but was he successful in applying it to IR? By examining the two thinkers in parallel, and differentiating them when necessary, the nature of Realist ethics in political theory and IR becomes clearer and one gains a greater insight into this mode of thought about ethics. For both thinkers the universal problems of ethics are best understood in terms of judgement that allies moral requirement with political necessity.
    
    Author: Sean Molloy (Kent University)
  - Wittgenstein on Judgment, Ethics and Concerns about Certainty
    
    This paper follows Ludwig Wittgenstein’s investigations into the stability and also flux inherent in our capacity to create and interpret meaning. What is the role of judgment in forming ethical precepts, even in the absence of universal referents that otherwise might be thought to guarantee shared understanding? I argue that Wittgenstein’s novel position on the epistemological conditions in which ethical positions are established lend his insights primary political relevance: just as meaningful linguistic use is possible despite a lack of foundational referents, political judgments about ethics are made without recourse to ultimately stable or universal grounding. Yet agreement in use and in judgments is nevertheless vital, especially to understand political judgements which are forged in a pluralistic space of contested – and thus shifting – conceptual parameters. From this starting point, I then elaborate how we can – despite conditions of uncertainty – nevertheless critique political concepts, exercise political judgment, and articulate ethical principles in times of crisis.
    
    Author: Désirée Weber (College of Wooster)
- 14:00 → 15:30
  
  Conference event / KEYNOTE 1: Geographies of Racism - SPONSORED BY POLITY Webinar Room
  
  Speakers: Prof. Gary Younge (University of Manchester), Dr Olivia Rutazibwa (University of Portsmouth), Prof. Robbie Shilliam (Johns Hopkins University)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  
  Conference event / Coffee and conversation networking session - European Security WG Room 10
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / Evolving Protection Architectures at the United Nations Room 2
  
  Sponsor: Intervention and Responsibility to Protect Working Group
  
  Convener: IR2P Working group
  
  Chair: Bola Adediran (University of the West of England)
  - The Responsibility to Protect after 15 Years: From UN General Assembly Debates to Security Council Practice
    
    Over the last fifteen years, the institutionalization of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has been continuing under the roof of the United Nations (UN) vis-à-vis the discussions in the literature regarding R2P’s “death” after the cases of Libya and Syria. Despite the growing number of criticisms against R2P due to controversial implementations and/or lack of implementation, in the meanwhile, under the UN General Assembly (UNGA), R2P has obtained the status of a formal agenda item three times, first in 2009 and then consecutively in 2018 and 2019. In this vein, this article first studies the formal debates in the UNGA in order to position R2P and its implementation under the roof the UN. Then, based on sample cases, it focuses on the practices of the UN Security Council for the purpose of analyzing the impact of the debates in the actual practices of the UN. Following from this, the article provides a critical overview of the gap between promises and action, and discusses the future of R2P.
    
    Authors: Pinar Gozen Ercan (Hacettepe University) , Menent Savas Cazala (Galatasaray University)
  - Everyday atrocity vs Responsibility to Protect: why efforts to expand the purview of R2P will be counterproductive
    
    A common criticism against intervention in general, and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) more specifically, is that focus is on atrocity crimes, and not on ‘everyday atrocities’ – a term used to refer to deaths from hunger, poverty, and ill-health. “In the Rwandan genocide, around 800,000 people were killed in one hundred days. A person dies for hunger-related reasons every 10 seconds” as Dunford and Neu recently argued. Chomsky similarly has argued that R2P encounters a problem of double standards as “there is no thought of invoking even the most innocuous prescriptions of R2P to respond to massive starvation in the poor countries”. The implication is that money and effort should be spent instead on hunger, poverty-alleviation, and development, since these cost more lives and can be considered underlying causes for atrocity crimes.
    This paper aims to show that such a view is misguided, and that it is likely to have the opposite of the intended results. Two main arguments will be put forward. It will be shown a. that the current focus of R2P on atrocity crimes is justified on moral, psychological, and political grounds, conflating the two priorities, atrocity crimes and everyday atrocities will be counterproductive, and b. that the two priorities are mutually reinforcing, support by the international community on an instrument such as R2P is bound to have positive repercussions on similar instruments of human security and development.
    
    Author: Athanasios Stathopoulos (Leiden University)
  - The Evolution of the R2P in a Changing World Order: Rethinking Mass Atrocity Prevention and the Role of the UN Security Council
    
    The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has evolved significantly over recent decades and has resulted in the norm being connected to a much wider array of human protection responses, such as refugee protection and the supply of humanitarian aid. This shift has occurred during a time of changing global power dynamics in which a more pluralist agenda is being pushed by rising powers, one in which respect for sovereign equality remains vehemently defended. Consequently, the pivot to expand what it means to implement the R2P has also notably led to a much less vocal and collective approach to mobilisation, in which ‘least worst’ solutions and ‘quiet diplomacy’ are being used in order to avoid greater tensions between major powers. Building on constructivist norm research, this paper focuses on how evolving applicatory contestation has played a key role in shifting the norm’s purpose and function, whereby the implementation of the R2P is increasingly being connected to less intrusive forms of prevention responses, often developed and agreed outside of the UN Security Council. This has significant implications for how we conceptualise both the Security Council’s role in responding to peace and security threats and the future effectiveness of the R2P norm itself.
    
    Author: Samuel Jarvis (York St John University)
  - Legitimation Practices in UN Security Council Decision-Making
    
    The legitimacy of the Security Council as an institution or its decisions is a frequent topic for research. Instead of questioning the legitimacy (or otherwise) of the Security Council as an institution or its outputs this paper analyses the way that legitimation practices – as a feature of Council negotiations – shape the process and outcome of negotiations. I focus on two categories of legitimation practices. First, external legitimation practices, where states seek legitimacy from their key audiences, either by being seen to be ‘doing something’, even if the decision they pass cannot be implemented, or by maintaining consistent arguments. Second, internal legitimation practices, which are practices adopted by drafters to enhance the legitimacy of a decision, including seeking unanimity, seeking regional support, and repeating previously used language. I draw on examples from the case of Darfur to illustrate the impacts of these legitimation practices and show how they have constrained and enabled decision-making. Legitimation practices are a lens of analysis of Security Council negotiations which offer insights into how decisions are made and avenues for informal reform towards atrocity prevention.
    
    Author: Jess Gifkins (The University of Manchester)
  - An R2P Review Commission: A Proposal for Holding States Accountable to Their Responsibility to Protect
    
    Despite the adoption of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) in 2005, mass atrocity violence continues to plague the international landscape. R2P attempts to set a standard of appropriate behaviour for states and other relevant actors vis-à-vis the prevention of, and response to, the four mass crimes of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. However, the means of holding states to account for their R2P commitments are heavily politicised. Beyond the realpolitik-infused United Nations (UN) Security Council, there is a lack of institutionalised means for enforcing R2P in practice, or for consistently highlighting R2P violations. The result is that R2P breaches are all too common, meaning there is an urgent need to find ways to hold states accountable to their R2P commitments. Applying a transitional cosmopolitan approach, this article examines an entirely new and supplementary reform measure to assist in R2P’s implementation. The article calls for the creation of an ‘R2P Review Commission’. This is a suggestion for an independent body composed of elected experts to scrutinise state practice across R2P’s three pillars. It argues that an R2P Review Commission is a mechanism aligned with the transitional cosmopolitan approach, providing an effective and feasible supplementary body to enhance R2P’s implementation.
    
    Author: Richard Illingworth (University of Leeds)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / Forgetting IR to Reimagine IR Room 9
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Conveners: Jenna Marshall (Universität Kassel) , Heba Youssef (University of Brighton) , Sharri Plonski (Queen Mary University of London)
  
  Chair: Helen Turton (The University of Sheffield)
  - International or not, being human is being "Global"
    
    International or not, being human is being "Global"
    
    Author: Deepshikha Shahi (The University of Delhi)
  - Selective amnesia: forgetting and remembering IR
    
    Selective amnesia: forgetting and remembering IR
    
    Author: Karen Smith (Leiden University)
  - Forgetting in order to remember: Unsettling knowledges in IR
    
    Forgetting in order to remember: Unsettling knowledges in IR
    
    Author: Arlene B. Tickner (Universidad del Rosario)
  - Conscious forgetting: a process for uncovering and engaging with previously disregarded knowledge
    
    Conscious forgetting: a process for uncovering and engaging with previously disregarded knowledge
    
    Author: Bryony Vince (The University of Sheffield)
  - Invisible and Unthinkable IR
    
    Invisible and Unthinkable IR
    
    Author: Zeynep Gülşah Çapan (University of Erfurt)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / Italian Political Science Association sponsored panel: TESTING IR THEORY AND RESEARCH ON WORLD ORDER TRANSITION Room 8
  
  Sponsor: Conference/Management
  
  Convener: Fulvio Attina (University of Catania)
  
  Chair: Fulvio Attina (University of Catania)
  - Where the Eagles Do Not Dare. The Modes of the Incremental Revisionist Challenge in the Normative Dimension
    
    The crisis of the US-led liberal order and the rising power of China and Russia have raised a lively debate on change and revisionism in world politics. Most of the works in the IR literature have thoroughly investigated the identity of revisionist powers, as well as the origin of their adversity to the status quo and their goals. These works have been generally influenced by the role played by radical challengers such as Wilhelmine Germany, the Third Reich or the USSR. Conversely, little attention has been paid to the modes of revisionism, except for the revolutionary actors’ choice to resort to war. Thus, the so-called incremental revisionists, whose challenge remains below this threshold and does not take the form of full-scale competition with the guarantor(s) of the international order, constitute a relatively overlooked issue. To address the shortcomings of previous research programs on revisionism, we identify the “incrementalists” of the contemporary age and investigate their policies in the normative dimension for eventually providing a more detailed taxonomy of this category.
    
    Authors: Gabriele Natalizia (University of Rome) , Lorenzo Termine (University of Rome )
  - Climate change politics and the great powers
    
    The paper stems from the notion of the conditioning influence of the world order contest of the great powers affecting the making of world policies towards collective problems. It covers the following themes: 1) the policy preferences of the US, China, and Russia towards international rules and regimes of the energy market and environment protection; 2) environment pollution and protection as issue of confrontation between the US, China, and Russia; 3) the European Union and the three-power coordination or separation in international environment negotiation; 4) the chance of protecting environment by multilateral policy-making.
    
    Author: Fulvio Attina (University of Catania)
  - Why Does It Not Work? Exceptions, Exemptions and Exclusions in International Order
    
    Newest IR research deals heavily with issues such as nature and origins of global order; the notion of liberal rules based order, its state or very existence; power transition; and revisionist vs. status quo powers. To understand the scope and functioning of an order, one needn’t only look at the key actors, their interests, capabilities and roles in sustaining the order; rather, it is necessary to observe and trace processes so as to identify instances in which the order does not function as expected, or even at all. Once such instances are identified, one can differentiate between the suspension of order (and its rules and principles) as a feature of the order itself, or as a consequence of various external forces. Obtaining substantive findings in these regards might allow for better understanding of the nature of contemporary global politics and anticipation of its future trajectories. Drawing from recent research on world order, particularly by Porter, Cunliffe, Wertheim and Lascurettes, while also taking into account traditional notions of Hedley Bull’s strain of the English School, the author seeks to develop a conceptual tool to enhance the comprehension of contemporary international order.
    
    Author: Mladen Lisanin (Institute for Political Studies, Belgrade)
  - Changes in Human Mobility World Policies: the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Post-Liberalism World Order
    
    Changes in Human Mobility World Policies: the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Post-Liberalism World Order.
    
    Author: Rosa Rossi (University of Palermo)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  
  Roundtable / Masculinities and Queer perspectives on Transitional Justice Room 7
  
  Masculinities and Queer Perspectives in Transitional Justice
  
  Although the field and study of transitional justice – referring to measures designed to deal with the legacies of human rights violations in the aftermath of conflicts or authoritarian regimes – was traditionally silent on gender, the past decade witnessed the increasing utilization of feminist theories to elucidate the gendered workings of post-conflict transitions. Not at least since Bell and O’Rourke in 2007 have posed the critical questions of ‘where are women, where is gender and where is feminism in transitional justice’, considerations around gender have increasingly gained traction in the growing literature. However, while gender perspectives have become a burgeoning focus of analysis in the TJ field, the dominant conceptualization of 'gender' in scholarship and practice on dealing with the past effectively remains an exclusive one, predominantly equated with ‘women’.
  As a result of these dominant foci and conceptions, careful consideration for the roles of masculinities and for the experiences of sexual and gender minorities have remained mostly absent. By bringing different critical approaches to gender in TJ – including masculinities and queer perspectives – into conversation, this roundtable seeks to begin to address these gaps. We thereby contribute towards a more inclusive and holistic understanding of gender in transitional spaces, which both challenges and contributes to current approaches and practices. The work of the participants in the roundtable addresses masculinities and queer perspective across different post-conflict contexts, as well as from diverse disciplinary, theoretical and methodological backgrounds, to illustrate the diversity of contexts where such approaches offer new insights into understanding, disrupting and/or complexifying these processes. The participants to the roundtable are all contributors to an edited volume of the same name, accepted with Intersentia Press and to be published in 2022.
  (Please note that we would need a panel timing that suits both US and European participants, eg. afternoon CET)
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Chair: Heleen Touquet (University of Leuven)
  
  Participants: Brandon Hamber (Ulster University - Transitional Justice Institute) , Pascha Bueno-Hansen (University of Delaware) , Philipp Schulz (University of Bremen) , Fobear Katherine (Fresno State University)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  
  Roundtable / RUSI sponsored roundtable: The Middle East, Geopolitics, and International Studies Today Webinar Room
  
  Roundtable on the Middle East, geopolitics, and International Studies today
  
  Sponsor: Conference/Management
  
  Chair: Hisham A Hellyer (University of Cambridge )
  
  Participants: Bader Al-Saif (Carnegie Middle East Centre) , Lina Khatib (Chatham House) , Ziya Meral (RUSI) , Dina Esfandiary (Crisis Group) , Hisham A Hellyer (University of Cambridge )
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / Reprising the Relationship between War and Technology Room 6
  
  Sponsor: War Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: Alex Neads (University of Bath)
  
  Chair: Alex Neads (University of Bath)
  - Global Drone Diffusion: Legal and Strategic Consequences
    
    It is no longer sufficient to talk about drones and drone warfare in simple and homogeneous terms. We have entered a new epoch, where a myriad of drone systems—some rudimentary, others complex, some used for good, others for bad—have been deployed in novel and deadly ways. By bringing together insight from the field of International Law and War Studies, this interdisciplinary paper will identify some of the most troublesome legal, and strategic concerns that arise out of this new proliferated drone landscape and provide important recommendations on how to remedy them.
    
    Author: Amelie Theussen (University of Southern Denmark)
  - Automation, Technology, and the Drivers of Strategic Innovation in Warfare
    
    Warfare and technology have a closely intertwined history. Indeed, it is commonly acknowledged that military technological innovations in times of conflict have a lasting impact on civilian life. Moreover, technology also plays a key role in strategic innovation during conflict insofar as the development of new means and methods of flighting brings a need for new strategies. However, when looking at the relationship between technology and strategic innovation, there is a risk of “putting the technology cart before the strategy horse” (Czarnekci 2014). This is especially true with the popular belief that technology will determine how future wars will be fought and won. Although the importance of technology cannot be ignored, it also mustn’t be overstated. Thus, this paper will argue that the focus on technology overshadows other key considerations having an impact on the need for strategic innovation such as the importance of the enemy’s identity and target identification in contemporary warfare. Considering this, it will be argued that emerging military technologies require complimentary strategic, doctrinal, and organizational change as opposed to solely being a driver of strategic innovation.
    
    Author: Andree-Anne (Andy) Melancon (Royal Military Academy Sandhurst)
  - On Lethality and the Conduct of War in the 21st Century
    
    The US Department of Defense has made improving ‘soldier lethality’ central to its future equipment, training and doctrine development. At stake is ensuring that US armed forces can defeat 21st century adversaries effectively and with minimum loss of life to American personnel. This may mean acquiring more precise weapons, autonomous systems or equipment that can outperform those used by an enemy force. Equally, it implies that American personnel must make use of technologies that improve survivability and neutralise enemy lethality so as to render them militarily ineffective. The centrality of this debate in US military circles has led to Britain’s armed forces showing an interest in lethality. In the British case, the Army seeks to use unmanned and autonomous systems
    
    Author: Matthew Ford (University of Sussex)
  - Time Keeps on Ticking: Land Warfare and Martial Expediency Through and Beyond the OODA Loop
    
    The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) brought forward a focus on how information technologies would change the shape of war through networks, meshes and instant decision-making. While contemporary Western martial thought has moved on from the RMA as unachievable technologically, too expensive, and fundamentally Clausewitzian problematic, Western militaries remain committed to expediency as they did prior to the RMA. This notion of expediency through understanding time as segmented and processing faster per segment is a characteristic of the modern system of battle. However, much of the application of time oriented frameworks from the OODA loop to chaos theory have arisen in air doctrine and moved into maritime and then army doctrine. This paper takes a theoretical look at the way in which time has been understood in relation to the transformation of martial doctrine and seeks to understand how it interacts with the characteristics of land warfare as a unique form of martial behaviour.
    
    Author: David Galbreath (University of Bath)
  - A Market for Military Assistance? Principals, Agents and the Diffusion of Military Technology in Historical Perspective
    
    In the second half of the 19th century, Meiji Japan embarked upon an unprecedented period of military-technological transformation. With the help of a series of Western military missions, the new Meiji state constructed a modern, technologically-advanced army and navy in the space of just a few short decades. Then as now, military assistance programmes envisage the transfer of military aid in return for particular political undertakings on the part of the recipient, propagating the donor’s model of martial expertise, praxis and technology in the process. Indeed, the case of Meiji Japan is touted as an exemplar of military diffusion. Yet, in Meiji Japan as in more recent experience, military assistance often produces partial or hybrid local military forms. Constructivist and STS approaches view such adaptive fusions as an inevitable consequence of relocating complex material and social systems. Meanwhile, rationalist scholars look to principal-agent theory, advocating for greater conditionality and coercion in military aid to manage interest asymmetries between recipient and donor. This paper examines the social, technical and political patterns of military diffusion in Meiji Japan, arguing that a market for military assistance undermined conditionality in the provision of military assistance, undermining both donor political leverage and the coherence recipient martial change. In so doing, it challenges some of the conclusions drawn from recent army-building endeavours in Iraq and Afghanistan, to question British visions of global ‘defence engagement’ as a tool for informal influence.
    
    Author: Alex Neads (University of Bath)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / Russian security policy between the West and the Rest Room 4
  
  Sponsor: Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group
  
  Conveners: Precious Chatterje-Doody (Open University) , Marcin Kaczmarski (University of Glasgow) , Natasha Kuhrt (Kings College London)
  
  Chair: Natasha Kuhrt (Kings College London)
  
  Discussant: Natasha Kuhrt (Kings College London)
  - Fearing the West, Conquering the East: Contemporary Russian Security Discourses in a Post-Imperial Age
    
    This paper builds on the ‘hybrid exceptionalist’ understanding of Russia’s hierarchical world-view introduced in Oskanian (2018). Moscow’s long-held policy discourses and practices are thus seen as entwined with a (post-)imperial geopolitical imaginary separating a sphere of influence from both ‘East’ and ‘West’, through both ‘mimicry’ of and a ‘doubling down’ on difference (Zaraköl, 2017)) from the Western core of modernity. In the contemporary context, this occurs through the appropriation and instrumentalization of liberal concepts – including ‘humanitarian intervention’ - on the one hand; and the (mis)appropriation of subaltern identities on the other. I illustrate these points through an analysis of the discourses of the Russian media, think-tanks, and policymakers surrounding two recent conflicts: one – the Russo-Georgian war of 2008 – situated in the Eastern borderlands of its claimed ‘sphere of special interests’; the other – the ongoing intervention in Ukraine – in its Western periphery. In the former case, the tropes used in justifying disciplining projections of power are posited to contain ‘orientalising’ characteristics, in addition to the geopolitical arguments on the perceived Western/NATO threat; in the latter instance, it is argued that discourses will be based on the construction of a mostly Western – rather than oriental - ‘other’. The paper will conclude by considering the implications of Russia’s ‘hybrid exceptionalist’ world-view for relations between Moscow, Kyiv, Tbilisi, and the West.
    
    Author: Kevork Oskanian (University of Birmingham)
  - Space, borders and hybridity: a critical appraisal of EU and Russia narratives on Crimea’s annexation
    
    The paper focuses on the EU and Russian narratives on “hybrid threats” (HT). Its main import is to think critically about the rationale of those narratives and the effects of the constructed linkage between hybridity and border security on EU-Russia relations. The traditional threat of a military attack against a Member-State territory having been set aside, the EU leaders rebuilt the security narratives based on multidimensional, transboundary problems that blur the traditional divides. They declared the hybrid activities - “from cyber-attacks disrupting the economy and public services, through targeted disinformation campaigns to hostile military actions” - as a serious and acute threat to the EU and its Member States. In this context, Russia is perceived as a source of insecurity by combining military actions (2014 intervention in Ukraine) and disinformation campaigns. Russia’s use of combined methods of subversion, propaganda, conventional, and unconventional means is not new. What is novel is the new context where hybridity has been applied. According to Russia’s Military Doctrine of 2014, current military conflicts involve “integrated employment of military force and political, economic, informational or other non-military measures”. In fact, HT is a new label to old practices that seems to empower Russia. Resorting to the theoretical framework of Critical Geopolitics and based on qualitative content analysis of the EU and Russia official documents on HT and Crimea’s annexation, the paper aims to answer the central research question: How did the EU’s and Russia’s narratives on Crimea’s annexation and hybrid threats redefine their perceptions on border security?
    
    Authors: Ana Paula Brandao (CICP - University of Minho) , Maria Raquel Freire (CES, FEUC-Universiy of Coimbra)
  - The Dynamics of Norm Co-optation: Explaining Russia’s Use of Liberal Peacebuilding Norms in Conflict-Affected Sates
    
    To date, existing research on peacebuilding and conflict management has generally treated Russia as a challenger to the liberal peace paradigm. Yet the simplistic labeling of Russia as an ‘authoritarian’ or ‘illiberal’ conflict manager whose ideas and interests are presupposed to oppose those of Western liberal peacebuilders obscures the complex processes of norm contestation in the evolution of the liberal peacebuilding order. The conventional narrative is that Moscow is opposed to liberal peace missions that champion political pluralism and decentralized governance. In this context, Russia has been often framed as an ‘autocracy promoter’ who relentlessly seeks to install despotically strong and centralized governments in conflict-affected states. While this appears to be the case in Syria, other cases show opposite tendencies. In fact, in Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan/Armenia, and Ukraine, Russia often intervened on behalf of ethnic minorities and advanced a policy that challenged the authority of central governments. Empirically, Russia’s image as ‘autocracy promoter’ in conflict-affected states is hence constructed on a small number of high profile cases such as Syria, and does not accurately represent the whole repertoire of Russian practices in conflict-affected states. In light of this, this paper argues that Russian ‘challenge’ to the liberal peace does not only come from the promotion of ‘illiberal’ norms, but also from the co-optation and tactical mobilization of liberal norms to advance its strategic interests.
    
    Author: Kazushige Kobayashi (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies)
  - From withdrawal to containment: continuity in Soviet and Russian Afghanistan policy 1989-1996 and beyond
    
    Many accounts on the topic of Moscow's Afghanistan policy focus on the junctures of the 1989 withdrawal and the 1996 rise of the Taliban, stressing change in Russia’s policy. These and other events, such as the Soviet collapse and the Tajik Civil War, did bring changes to Moscow’s Afghanistan policy, yet these changes did not alter Moscow’s fundamental operational aims on the ground, namely to contain the instability and the ‘jihadist’ threat from spreading from Afghanistan into the former Soviet south. In this paper, I argue that the backbone of Russia’s Afghanistan policy may be referred to as a ‘containment policy’. With this label, I refer to a variety of measures carried out consistently by Moscow in Central Asia from 1989 on. Containment policy was operationalised by border protection assistance, engaging parties to the conflict directly, and approaching other external actors to assist in stabilising Afghanistan. To narrow the scope of research, the paper focuses primarily on the 1989-1996 period, tracing the evolution of these three measures and their implementation on the ground. In addition, I draw implications for understanding Russia’s Afghanistan policy beyond 1996. In particular, ‘containment’ is potentially revealing about Russia’s welcoming attitude to the US and NATO operation in Afghanistan, namely that it was in line with its existing policy on Afghanistan. To substantiate this argument, I draw extensively from the existing Russian and international literature on the conflict and the diplomacy around it.
    
    Author: Ivan Ulises Kentros Klyszcz (University of Tartu)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  
  Roundtable / The UK's Role in Global Health Security and COVID-19 Room 1
  
  The UK has long had an established role in Global Health Security though its significant funding of global health institutions such as the WHO and GAVI Alliance, epistemic community of pandemic experts, university partnerships, and global health diplomats. According to assessments such as the Global Health Security Index the UK (alongside the US) was set to be one of the best placed states to deal with a major pandemic. The catastrophic response of the UK to COVID-19 challenges this assessment and poses significant questions for the UK as a leading actor in global health security and pandemic preparedness. Speakers on this Roundtable reflect on the impact of COVID19 on the UK's role in global health security, drawing on their research on borders, militaries, previous pandemics, equity to medicines, the right to health, and understandings of health security.
  
  Sponsor: Global Health Working Group
  
  Chair: Sophie Harman (Queen Mary University of London)
  
  Participants: Simon Rushton (University of Sheffield) , Sharifah Sekalala (University of Warwick) , Fawzia Gibson Fall (QMUL) , Emma Louise Anderson (University of Leeds)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / Trumpism, US Foreign Policy and International Relations Theory Room 5
  
  Sponsor: US Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: Thorsten Wojczewski
  
  Chair: Thorsten Wojczewski
  
  Discussant: Cornelia Baciu (University of Konstanz)
  - Understanding Trump’s foreign policy and its rejection of liberalism
    
    The American Mission is a framework that has driven the US since the founding days of the republic. Liberty and the pursuit of happiness are universal values to repeat around the world. In contemporary times, this longstanding promotion of liberal values is explained through the language and practice of liberal internationalism and democracy promotion. With the foreign policy failures of the Bush administration alongside the financial and economic crises, the Obama administration limited democracy promotion’s use as a suitable tool to acquiring its foreign policy objectives. This paper examines democracy promotion at the conceptual, rhetoric and implementation levels and suggests that this liberal internationalist and democratic peace theory-inspired foreign policy framework was further dismantled by the Trump administration. Dismantled to such an extent that liberal ideology was rejected in favour of a populist, unilateral and economic driven nationalism. This paper also questions the long-term implications of its rejection during these last few years and suggests that the Biden administration looks likely to step-back from this full-scale rejection.
    
    Author: Matthew Hill (Liverpool John Moores University )
  - The irrational actor: the Trump administration, the fracturing of US foreign policy identity, and the challenge for IR theory
    
    This paper will consider the challenge posed by the fragmented and inconsistent nature of Trump’s foreign policy to IR theory, considering the case of the administration’s approach to NATO, to NATO member states, and to broader questions of European security. It will argue that traditional IR theoretical approaches struggle to explain Trump’s foreign policy because Trump’s personal approach does not appear to be informed by traditional conceptions of foreign policy interests or identity, and because other individuals, groups, and organisations within the Trump administration hold widely differing and frequently changing positions. Constructivist approaches allow scholars to make sense of the individual voices in Trump’s foreign policy – how they articulate both specific policies and how those policies relate to actor understandings of US national identity – but characteristics of the Trump administration set significant limits even here. The two most significant of these are the instability of administration membership – key foreign and security policy positions have experienced a high turnover of personnel – and the lack of transparency, including documentation, on foreign policy matters. The paper argues that the Trump administration’s foreign policy thus poses fundamental conceptual and empirical challenges for IR scholars of all theoretical positions, and for the possibility of thinking about a coherent US national identity narrative in this period.
    
    Author: Ruth Deyermond (King's College London )
  - Right-wing Populism, Foreign Policy and Folk Realism: Trumpism and US Foreign Policy
    
    The apparent global rise of populism poses a challenge to International Relations Theory as populist concepts such as ‘the people’ do not readily fit into the established analytical categories and assumptions of mainstream theories. This paper discusses these challenges in relation to (neo)realism and proposes a re-conceptualization of (neo)realist theory as folk realism as theoretical framework to capture the main features of right-wing populist foreign policy. It argues that folk realism constitutes a crude variant of realism which (1)foregrounds the notion of popular sovereignty, (2)seeks to appeal to the common-sense and fears of ‘ordinary’ people, (3)offers simple and swift solutions to international problems, and (4)propagates the deliberate transgression of the conventions of diplomacy and established tenets of a state’s foreign policy. The paper applies this theoretical framework to the case of the United States and examines the impact of right-wing populism on US foreign policy under Donald Trump as well as the broader implications of right-wing populism for foreign policy-making.
    
    Author: Thorsten Wojczewski
  - Paradoxes of American Exceptionalism and Restraint from a Neo-Classical Realism Perspective
    
    US exceptionalism and a foreign policy of restraint has acerbated under Donald Trump. Defensive, offensive realists or institutionalists define restraint quite distinctly. Offensive realists define restraint as an exit from a hegemonic order because of the costs associated with it and because a rules-based international order is utopic given the anarchical structure of the international system and faults of international institutions (Mearsheimer 2018, 2019). Institutionalists define restraint as renouncing at hegemony for participating in a rule-based multipolar international order, in which restraint is associated with leadership transformation and seeking to shape a world order via engagement and commitment in multilateral institutions (Ikenberry 2011). However, these approaches seem to lack theoretical depth needed to explain political decisions during Donald Trump. To fill this gap, I propose neo-classical realism to study American exceptionalism and restraint during the mandate of Donald Trump. I argue that, first US exit from important international agreements can be explained by international-level variables, such as competition with China. Second, I argue that domestic factors also influence Trump’s political preferences, and this is demonstrated by the “America First” programme. Third, I argue that individual-level variables also play a role in policy-decisions of illiberal leaders – this was demonstrated by Trumps calling in of the military in response to the riots in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. Trump demonstrated avidity for power exertion in the detriment of the Constitution and demands for justice. This paper adds a theoretical distinction to neo-classical realism, by demonstrating the importance of individual-level variables in policy decisions. At policy level, the findings show that American exceptionalism has not ended, but it transformed. It also reveals new paradoxes, related to the aspiring role of world leader (over China) and restraint, while simultaneously opening an interesting puzzle pertaining to the role of EU as an emerging pole of power.
    
    Author: Cornelia Baciu (Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Panel / Forgetting International Studies: the exclusion of Hispano-American contributions Room 3
  
  Sponsor: Orphan Papers track
  
  Convener: Jose Ricardo Villanueva Lira (Universidad del Mar)
  
  Chair: Jose Ricardo Villanueva Lira (Universidad del Mar)
  - Hermila Galindo's international thought
    
    Hermila Galindo (1886-1954) has been identified as "the most prominent feminist of the Mexican Revolution", among those who have studied her trajectory and legacy of struggle for the political and social rights of women in the first decades of the 20th century in Mexico. There are various studies that have rescued the figure of Hermila Galindo and her feminist legacy, by studying her publications and presentations. However, this presentation aims to demonstrate the transcendence of her international thought and highlight some of her activist work at the international level, including, for instance, her work as the representative of Mexico in international feminist congresses. It is shown that while neglected, Galindo's international thought was important during the interwar period.
    
    Author: Indra Labardini Fragoso (Universidad del Mar)
  - ANTONIO TRUYOL Y SERRA: FROM EUROPEAN SOCIETY TO THE CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM
    
    Contemporary International Relations has its foundations in remote but also in recent history. Thanks to the thought that a classic such a Antonio Truyol y Serra, belonging to the Spanish school, left in the field of International Law, scholars of the discipline of International Relations have been able to continue constructing concepts of historiography to clarify the current world. This renowned thinker and author bequeathed a broad vision of the International Society by going back to the 19th and 20th centuries with the European State system, through Christianity, to the current structure of the International System. The main objective of this presentation is to study and analyze the international thought of the Spanish jurist Antonio Truyol y Serra, in order to determine what is the vision that is still held today of the States including world and regional powers.
    
    Author: Carlos Gabriel Argüelles Arredondo (Universidad del Mar)
  - The international thought of Octavio Paz
    
    Octavio Paz is a very well known Mexican poet. In fact, he was awared de Nobel Prize in Literature in 1990. Nevertheless, is less known that he was also an avid diplomat and a prolific writer in several subjects. The purpose of this paper is to present some of Paz's writings related to international issues. It is shown that Paz' output on global affairs, and particularly on the United States and Latin America might be of considerable value today.
    
    Author: Alberto Lozano Vázquez (Universidad del Mar)
  - José María Torres Caidedo
    
    The first modern international studies of Latin America arose with the debate by Latin American diplomats in Paris in the mid-nineteenth century. They discussed the history and future destiny of the nations of Spanish and Portuguese America. Among them, there was José María Torres-Caicedo, a Colombian diplomat who played a notable role by compiling treaties and historical documents from the wars of independence in Latin American countries. For decades, historians have discussed the origin of the term “Latin America”. In a 1968 essay, John Phelan stated that it was in Napoleon III’s Paris that the Latin American race began to be discussed and that it was then that the expression took effect. He attributed the paternity indirectly to Michel Chevalier, a former Saint-Simonian, economist, publicist and adviser to the emperor on foreign policy, which helped to spur a historiographical debate by linking the concept of Latin America with the French imperialist policies of the time. Although Chevalier had been the ideologist of a pan-Latin foreign policy on the part of France, the fact is that he never used the expression “Latin America” as such. It was the forgotten Colombian writer José María Torres Caicedo the father of the expression for several reasons, the most important being his proselytizing work in favor of the unity of Latin American countries and his constant use of the term in magazines, books and debates in Paris between the late 1850s and early 1880s. It all started with his poem “Las dos Américas” [The two Americas] in 1857. Torres Caicedo has a large collection of articles and essays in the European press, considered important political and literary vehicles, also with publication in the Spanish-speaking world. Furthermore, the life of José María Torres Caicedo and his role in the International Literary and Artistic Association (ALAI) shows that the discourse regarding intellectual property reinforced the idea of the existence of a national literature and nationhood with two boundaries, that of Latin America and national identity in Colombia. This paper discusses Torres Caicedo’s role in advancing Latin American thought in different regions of the world.
    
    Author: Jessica De Alba Ulloa (Universidad Anáhuac México)
  - Fernando H. Cardoso's contribution to International Relations
    
    There are not many recognized theoretical contributions to International Relations outside the English speaking world. Dependency theory, however, was relatively well-known in IR academia during the 1970s and 1980s. Nevertheless, it currently receives very little attention in the English speaking IR academia. The aim of this paper is to recover some of the main contributions of Fernando H. Cardoso to Dependency theory and explore whether or not they are still relevant to our current understandings of the world.
    
    Author: Almendra Ortiz de Zárate (Universidad Anáhuac México)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  
  Roundtable / NATO 2030: Debating NATO's Future Room 8
  
  NATO is currently engaged in a process of strategic reflection on its future: the NATO 2030 expert group report was published in November 2020 and the alliance is likely to adopt a new strategic concept in the new few years. The context for this is an environment defined by increasingly conflictual great power relations between the US (and the West more broadly) and China and Russia and a widening of the parameters of great power competition to include domains such as cyber, space and advanced technology. At the same time, other non-traditional challenges – such as climate change and migration – are likely to pose acute security problems for Europe and North America in coming decades. These challenges raise questions about what NATO is, what NATO is for, and the range of policy options open to NATO and its members. This panel will provide an opportunity for academic reflection on these dynamics and NATO’s response to them. Contributors will address a range of different issues within the broad NATO debate: Brexit, global Britain and NATO (Prof. Mark Webber), NATO, enlargement and Russia (Dr. Tracey German), NATO and the Balkans (Dr. Martin Smith), NATO and the space domain (Dr. Simon Smith) and NATO and the China challenge (Prof. Andrew Cottey).
  
  Sponsor: European Security Working Group
  
  Chair: Nele Marianne Ewers-Peters (School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University)
  
  Participants: Tracey German (King's College London/JSCSC) , Mark Webber (University of Birmingham) , Simon Smith (Staffordshire University) , Andrew Cottey (University College Cork) , Martin Smith (Royal Military Academy Sandhurst)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Panel / Recent reflections in IPT Room 5
  
  Sponsor: Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working Group
  
  Convener: CRIPT Working group
  
  Chair: Christof Royer (Central European University)
  
  Discussant: Christof Royer (Central European University)
  - What has disciplinarity ever done for IR?
    
    Abstract: Should IR be a discipline of its own dedicated to ‘the international’ or remain a subdiscipline of Political Science studying ‘international politics’? Alternatively should it be just an academic field where multiple disciplines meet to explore world politics? There is much confusion about what IR is for and what disciplinarity entails. While supporters have tended to conflate disciplinarity with scientism, opponents of IR’s disciplinarity are prone to emphasising only the negative exclusionary aspects. Drawing on a Foucauldian theorisation of what disciplinarity is, I argue that while there are dangers to disciplinarity, ultimately bigger risks are associated with not embracing it in an academic world dominated by multiple academic disciplines. Rosenberg’s suggestion for what IR’s own unique disciplinary subject matter is – multiplicity – provides both an example and part of an explanation for this: given IR’s necessary coexistence with a multiplicity of other disciplines, writing IR’s disciplinarity is today a necessary precondition to avoiding colonisation by other disciplines and transdisciplinary epistemes such as behaviouralism, rationalism and new materialism.
    
    Author: Olaf Corry (University of Leeds)
  - Travelling Theory and its Consequences: José Ortega y Gasset and Radical Conservatism in Post-Cold War Japan
    
    The last decade of the Cold War and the early years of the post-Cold War international order saw the emergence of a radical conservatism in Japan which has since taken root as a key ideological force in the country’s conservative political culture. This article traces the neglected but important influence of José Ortega y Grasset’s theory of the masses on this contemporary movement. However, in this journey across time, space, and culture, the theory of mass society has mutated. The article examines the ways in which Japanese radical conservative thinkers Susumu Nishibe and Keishi Saeki interpreted and applied Ortega’s work to critique the development of Japan’s contemporary political landscape. Radical conservatives transformed Ortega’s theory of the modern masses and his argument for elite liberalism into a critique of the liberal international order which favours reactionary nationalism. To understand this shift, the article examines the conceptualizations of modernization, national identity, and morality as a necessary background to such theoretical and political appropriation.
    
    Author: Karin Narita (Queen Mary, University of London)
  - Timing Concepts: Embodied Time(s) and Concept Analysis.
    
    Research on time and temporality is increasingly popular among social scientists. While recent contributions have productively explored the conceptual parameters of these ideas and discussed their socio-political consequences, the implications of re-thinking time in conceptual inquiry remain overlooked. Put differently, whilst extant accounts engage time as a concept, the time of concepts is left unattended. To fill-in this gap, this paper looks closely at the understanding of time that concepts embed and discusses its implications. Building on Reinhart Koselleck’s Conceptual History – arguably the most time-focused approach to concept analysis – I offer an innovative method for the analysis of concepts that foregrounds time and its materiality. Firstly, I problematise Koselleck’s distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘historical’ time as well as his focus on language. To tackle both issues, I turn to Andrew Hom’s ‘timing theory’ and queer-theoretical accounts of time as embodied. Secondly, I propose complementing Koselleck’s language-centred method with its material-focused parallel. In particular, I suggest identifying, tracing, and analysing concepts as embodied in matter while simultaneously attending to their (material) temporal structure – i.e. the understanding of time they hint at. Lastly, I showcase this method empirically on the under-theorised concept of ‘military victory’ through the analysis of Greek trophies.
    
    Author: Mirko Palestrino (Queen Mary University of London)
  - Studying Justice in International Trade Negotiations: Feminist-Informed Ethnographic Insights
    
    It is commonly argued that while ethnographic approaches to the study of negotiations generate unique insights which cannot be gained through any other method, at the same time this an extremely labor-intensive and time consuming research method with one major drawback being that it is prone to a lack of scientific rigor and objectivity. I argue, however, that this method is the most concrete and empirical of methods, taking nothing for granted and utilizing less mediated knowledge than others.
    With this as my point-of-departure, this project breaks new ground by applying ethnographic methods to problems of international trade negotiation. Approaching negotiators as a network involved in constructing the meaning of justice in international trade, I employ multi-sited ethnography, participant observation, interviews, field notes, and textual analysis through close reading, in order to tease out meanings of justice that inform the arguments of trade negotiators representing small developing states in the Commonwealth Caribbean. My approach is informed by a feminist research ethic with a normative commitment to promote justice for small developing states in the context of trade negotiations.
    
    Author: LISA SAMUEL (NEW YORK UNIVERSITY)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Panel / Remembering race and coloniality in the making of the international: Mapping Sites of Disruption and Destruction Room 4
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: Sharri Plonski (Queen Mary University of London)
  
  Chair: Heba Youssef (University of Brighton)
  - India’s settler colonialism and its effects on the nomadic migration.
    
    On 13 November, a video went viral on social media showing officials demolishing the
    thatched huts while its residents stand witness haplessly. The video triggered a sharp reaction
    from the public who feared this was just a glimpse of the future. This event was part of the
    drive that came a few days after the High Court declared a scheme, introduced in 2001, by
    the state government which allowed nomadic tribes to live in pasture lands during the grazing
    season, illegal and unconstitutional and therefore started demolishing houses and evicting
    people from their lands.
    These huts belonged to the Gujjars – a nomadic Muslim majority sub-tribe moving from
    place to place seasonally in mountainous pastures of the Himalayas along with their herds of
    goats, sheep and horses. According to the 2011 government census, out of the 12 Scheduled
    Tribes, the Gujjars are the most populous in India, having a population of 763,806. They
    form 69.1% of the total ST population. These families have travelled for centuries between
    summer pastures in the Himalayas and winter grazing grounds in the lowland plains.
    Much of the trouble seen in the video had occurred around the Jammu region, the majority-
    Hindu city where the Gujjars have their winter pastures. Hindu nationalists accuse the
    nomads of encroaching on their land when they build permanent home, and say nomad
    leaders want to make the region majority-Muslim. Like many of India’s religious minorities,
    particularly its Muslims, the Gujjars have felt increasingly isolated as attacks by Hindu
    extremist groups have risen after the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, was
    swept into power in India in 2014. The religious divide widened even further in Jammu-
    Kashmir state when the BJP formed a coalition government with a regional party. The
    Himalayan region of Kashmir is claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan but divided
    between them.
    This paper explores how these acts can be the part of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata
    Party (BJP) government’s project to dispossess people of their land and property in order to
    change the demographic status of the Muslim-majority region. The paper looks at how the
    timing of these events, when restrictions have put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19
    have compounded the nomads' problems. It comes to the conclusion that the nomadic
    community migration in the Indian Himalayan region is heading towards a new crisis.
    
    Author: Syed Waqar Shah (Cardiff University)
  - Writing the embodied experience of performance, race, gender and sexual orientation: a case study in the queer-of-color space of the ballroom scene
    
    In this paper, I explore the following question: what are possible ways of writing that connect concerns of embodiment (including embodied knowledges) with issues of structural oppression and resistance within larger socio-political worlds? I am particularly interested in how this question relates to embodied issues of performance, race, gender and sexual orientation, as I ask this question in the context of research on the space of the Ballroom scene. By “ballroom scene,” I make reference to the underground black and latinx LGBTQ+ scene created in NYC around the 1970s, which includes performance forms such as voguing and runway (this is not the ballroom scene of foxtrot or salsa). This scene has continued to exist in its underground form in the USA since and has now spread to many other spaces around the world, transporting and translating its postcolonial, antiracist, queer and feminist politics along with its performance forms to the various geographical spaces where it has traveled to. My ethnographic fieldwork focuses on the small and recently emerging ballroom scene in Switzerland.
    
    In my exploration of ways to write about bodies, embodiement, oppression and resistance, I consider conerns regarding writing of fieldwork and of analysis. For writing in fieldwork, this includes fieldnotes but also exploring the possibilities offered by other mediums such as filming, photographing, and enskillment (in this case, learning a particular performance form, which can be a way of writing with / into the body). For writing of analysis, I include writing up, but also explore what can be learned from editing film, curating photographic series, and attempts at translating embodied learned knowledge of the reseracher into forms that can be shared with others.
    
    Author: Muriel Bruttin (University of Lausanne)
  - Hindu nationalism and the ‘Israeli model’: Legitimating counter-‘terrorism’, colonialism, and ethnocracy in Kashmir
    
    In recent years and especially since India’s 2019 election, supporters and critics have increasingly analogized the Hindu nationalist project in terms of an ‘Israeli model’ of counter-‘terrorism’, colonialism, and ethnocracy, where disfavoured subjects of a putatively liberal-democratic state face forms of state violence and are afforded unequal rights and status. An emerging body of scholarship sheds light on whether this analogy is justifiable and/or analytically fruitful, but overwhelmingly within a methodologically nationalist, comparative framing. Rather than just evaluating this comparison on its own terms – assessing whether/how an ‘Israeli model’ is materializing – this paper instead argues that invocations of this analogy can themselves function as discourses implicated in (re)producing material practices of the Hindutva project. Focusing on the politics of governing Kashmir, the paper demonstrates how the Hindutva project draws on right-wing Zionism, as an ideology and set of practices, as a resource for (re)producing itself. To this end, the paper 1) theorizes the utility of moving beyond a comparative analytic of militaristic nationalisms; 2) discusses how Hindutva ideologues have envisioned and legitimated their project through favourably invoking Israel’s modes of state violence; and 3) examines how, following the August 2019 abrogation of Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status, appeals to an ‘Israeli model’ have helped condition the possibility of annexation and demographic reconfiguration of Muslim-majority Kashmir.
    
    Author: Derek Verbakel (York University)
  - Silences and affects in post-revolutionary Iran: fantasizing about race and Iranianness
    
    This paper discusses how some Iranian nationalist narratives, moved by the fantasy of overcoming Iran’s traumatic past and regaining its ancient superiority, reproduced racialized worldviews through the erasure of slavery’s legacy and non-Persian subjects in the country after the 1979 revolution, such as Azeris and Afro-Iranians. I suggest that racial ideals, like those related to Aryan myths, became entangled with phantasmatic narratives to which the post-revolutionary Iranian regime was and still is affectively and libidinally attached. Anti-imperialist discourses accuse and work against Western imperial and colonial oppressions and discriminations but simultaneously maintain racialized hierarchies in Iran. In this sense, psychoanalytic discourse analysis is employed to discuss imaginaries and national self-consciousnesses built from the ideas of gharbzadegi (Westoxification, Occidentosis) and cultural schizophrenia. By employing the Lacanian concepts of fantasy and enjoyment, this paper aims to contribute to a growing literature on the psychic attachments to nationalism and racism and to mobilize discussions of race and racialization in non-Western contexts, considering the effects of colonialism and imperialism in Iran.
    
    Keywords: Iran, anti-imperialism, psychoanalysis, race, Lacan.
    
    Author: Mateus Schneider Borges (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro)
  - Reckoning with Global Britain: a truth and reconciliation commission on colonialism?
    
    Imperial-colonialism is constitutive of 'modernity' - our way of being, knowing, and doing. British imperialism, in particular, was directly imposed upon all but a few of today's nation states. Yet its colonial past is obscured through national denialism and global Western hegemony, preventing an honest interrogation of its role in the racial patriarchal capitalism of today's global political economy. This paper considers the application of transitional justice principles to the problem of British colonialism, its past and its present. Using a decolonial feminist approach, this paper suggests the application of transformative justice principles - a theoretical extension of transitional justice theory and practice - of truth and reconciliation pared with material commitments based on reparations rather than aid, could support the overturn of the Anglo-supremacist narrative and material dependencies that have forged today's unequal political economy. In addressing British denialism and the narrative of Anglo-supremacism, this paper hopes to expand debate on how justice and equity might be achieved through the acknowledgement and redress of colonial harms.
    
    Author: Asha Herten-Crabb (London School of Economics and Political Science)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  
  Roundtable / Review of International Studies Roundtable I: Disruption by Design Room 1
  
  An RIS-sponsored roundtable.
  
  Sponsor: Conference/Management
  
  Chair: Martin Coward (University of Manchester)
  
  Participants: Charmaine Chua (UCSB) , Nicole Grove (University of Hawaii at Manoa) , Martin Coward (University of Manchester) , Nisha Shah (University of Ottawa) , Louise Amoore (Durham University)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  
  Roundtable / The Art of Forgetting IR: Aesthetics, Creative Methods and the Politics of War and Peace. Room 2
  
  Taking the provocation of ‘forgetting’ International Studies, this roundtable reflects on the role of art, aesthetics and creative methods in facilitating a critical engagement with the politics of war and peace beyond the narrow conventions of deterministic and state-centric approaches. We bring together scholars who have been working at the intersection of cultural studies, feminist IR, and peace and conflict studies to discuss how the arts, in various forms, have enabled their attunement to the legacies of violence, conflict, and “post-conflict” failures, as well as aspirations for life and peace otherwise. Building on the longstanding work of feminist and other critical IR scholars ( e.g. Agathangelou & Ling 2009; Lisle 2010; Zalewsky, 2013; Hozić 2016; Bleiker 2017; Choi 2018; Choi, Selmeczi & Strauss, 2020; Särmä, 2020), we start from the premise that turning to aesthetics and creativity as a research ethos can help us challenge and re-imagine the stories we tell about the global politics of violence, war and peace. We ask our contributors to reflect on how mobilising creative methods might enable us to navigate the forces of conflict, violence and destruction, but also to stand in better proximity to dramas of adjustment, fragile solidarities and affective reorientations that dispel war’s totalising shadows. Contributors will address the following questions:
  - Drawing upon your research, what makes the arts as a distinct mode of knowledge production/site of engagement in the politics of conflict and peace?
  -How can the arts and creative methods equip the discipline of International Studies to respond to spectacles of conflict, enduring slow violence and failed promises of peace?
  -Can the arts, in their various forms, inspire visions for peace and alternative ways of being in the world?
  -To what extent can artistic and creative methods help us interrogate and resist disciplinary boundaries, hierarchies and exclusions reproduced in the academy?
  
  Sponsor: South East Europe Working Group
  
  Chair: Roisin Read (University of Manchester)
  
  Participants: Birgit Poopuu (Tallinn University) , Laura Mills , Lydia Cole (University of Durham) , Sarah Jankowitz (Queen's University Belfast) , Maria Adriana Deiana (Queen’s University Belfast) , Giovanna Di Mauro (College of Europe)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Panel / Water Security Across Scales: Intersections of the International Room 6
  
  Sponsor: Environment Working Group
  
  Conveners: Ashok Swain (Uppsala University) , Cameron Harrington (Durham University) , Jeremy Schmidt (Durham University)
  
  Chair: Jeremy Schmidt (Durham University)
  
  Discussant: Cat Button (Newcastle University)
  - Water security, race, and ethnicity: a systematic assessment of the literature
    
    Issues of race and ethnicity are not prevalent in studies of water security. Why not? In this paper, we present findings from a meta-analysis of academic literature published on water security since 1990. Our findings show fewer than 0.05% (n = 13 494) of water security publications explicitly address issues of either race or ethnicity. This blind spot prompted further considerations of how race and ethnicity may be indirectly or implicitly addressed through different categories of analysis including poverty, inequality, or indigenous rights. Together, our analysis of studies that explicitly or implicitly address issues of race and ethnicity suggests significant opportunities for future water security studies. We identify two. The first is to forge clearer conceptual linkages between race and water as co-variables in assessments of security and conflict. The second is to identify the differences that prioritizing race and ethnicity may make to water security studies that presently only implicitly address how the construction of race and ethnicity intersect with a range of social and environmental power relations (e.g. gender, class, infrastructure).
    
    Authors: Jeremy Schmidt (Durham University) , Cameron Harrington (Durham University)* , Ashok Swain (Durham University)* , Thuli Montana (Durham University)
  - Water diplomacy between desecuritisation and securitisation of water
    
    The purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between securitisation and desecuritisation of water. In particular, the paper examines cases of transboundary water security of large rivers in which two or more states are involved. Much of the literature on water conflict have identified instances of securitisation of water, pointing to the problems of institutions and their effectiveness to regulated and facilitate joint water management. Recent studies on water diplomacy point to the processes of desecuritisation as a way to promote peaceful outcomes over water, as well as a way to alter the status quo of water allocation arrangements. The paper advances conceptual work by analysing how and when securitisation and desecuritisation occur and considers its temporal characteristic. Examining cases from South Asian and South-east Asian rivers of the Brahmaputra and Mekong basins, the paper argues that water diplomacy initiatives need to better account for the effects of desecuritisation, which are independent to cooperative action.
    
    Author: Naho Mirumachi (Kings College London)
  - Transboundary Water Governance and Imperial Legacies: Cooperation on the Nile and Mekong Rivers
    
    Understanding water as a security concern has become a prominent framework for analysing global water politics and has implications for its governance. In recent years, a wealth of scholarship has critically examined the ‘security’ framing of politics in contemporary world politics (see for example, Fischhendler 2015; Pahl-Wostl, Bhaduri, and Gupta 2016; Fröhlich et al. 2018), with many studies highlighting the importance of transboundary or global water governance in resolving water insecurity (Swatuk et al 2015; Harris et al. 2015; Sultana and Loftus 2019). However, analyses of transboundary water governance rarely investigate the historical legacies that inform unspoken assumptions and practices over shared water – particularly as the development of early global governance and the first international organizations in 19th century Europe rested on contestations over the meaning of and collective practices concerning transboundary rivers. By analysing current institutions on the Nile and Mekong Rivers, this paper will highlight the ways in which today’s transboundary water management institutions are shaped by the legacies of imperialism that spread institutional models from Europe. In doing so, this paper argues that the imperial legacies that underpin these water governance institutions perpetuate problematic framings of water security that end up institutionalizing unequal power among actors.
    
    Author: Joanne Yao (Queen Mary, University of London )
  - Combatting Water Insecurities as the Best Path towards Water Security
    
    Much of the literature on water security has so far tended to take a state-centric, end point dominated perspective. In particular there has been much attention to conceptualising and measuring state progression towards a pre-defined condition of optimal “water security”. For example, the various water security indicators are predicated on the notion that this endpoint is quantifiable and can be managed from the national level – e.g. the Asian Development Bank Water Security Indicators. More recently, a growing number of critical scholars, from geography, public health and anthropology especially, have begun to explore the idea that it is more important to understand the complexities of contemporary water insecurity as experienced by real people in households. The Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) global consortium has worked since 2016 to create the world’s first cross-culturally validated multidimensional scale for comparative analysis of household scale water insecurity. Launched through publications in the British Medical Journal in 2019, the HWISE scale is now being taken up by scholars and practitioners all over the world and is transforming our understanding of the everyday realities of water insecurity.
    
    Author: Chad Staddon (UWE Bristol)
- 20:00 → 21:30
  Panel / The Toxicity of Empire: Ruination, sacrifice, myth and nostalgia Room 2
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: Gitte du Plessis (Tampere University)
  
  Chair: Kenneth Gofigan Kuper (University of Guam)
  
  Discussant: Lauren Wilcox (University of Cambridge)
  - Toxic Stories: Contesting the Fossil Myth of Fuel Expansion
    
    A just and sustainable energy transition will require not only new fuels, but new energy stories. The dominant, ‘fossil’ myth of energy depoliticizes the forward march of energy intensity over human history. Instead, we need energy stories that more fully account for the role of political domination in major energy transitions of the past. Fossil domination is historically unique in its marriage of racial capitalism and imperialism, but it may also reflect broader patterns of fuel transition. I draw upon recent research on two momentous energy transitions – the rise of grain states and fossil fuel empires – that show how political innovations in labor extraction and domination were the main catalysts for transition, rather than superior fuel technologies or a public thirst for more energy. Emphasizing the role of domination across energy history disrupts the fossil myth, while also making space for more transformative energy stories.
    
    Author: Cara Daggett (Virginia Tech)
  - ’Some Islands are More Inhabitable than Others’: Nuclear Testing and Layered Extraterritoriality in the Pacific
    
    During the Cold War Western powers detonated over 300 nuclear weapons in the Pacific. This paper asks what conditions enabled the West to designate the Pacific as a sacrificial zone, while seeking to understand how people today inhabit and navigate the nuclear landscapes left behind by nuclear testing. To answer these questions, I critically draw on Alfred Runte’s seminal work on so-called ‘worthless lands’ in the American imagination to argue that the nuclear geography of the Pacific is best understood as partially overlapping and constantly shifting layers of extraterritoriality. Focusing specifically on the Marshall Islands, this paper argues that nuclear testing was made possible through a set of political, military and scientific practices that inscribed parts of the region as worthless territory that could be set aside (‘extraterritorialized’) for the purpose of nuclear experimentation. The classification of nuclear sites as worthless is not a stable one, however, and has been subject to contestations about the exact boundaries of extraterritorial sites and/or attempts to expand upon their extraterritorial character by adding new layers that set aside and claim these sites for nuclear waste storage, offshore tax zones, or world heritage sites intended for global cultural consumption. The paper ends with a few conceptual reflections on the idea of layered nuclear extraterritoriality and suggests the notion could be usefully extended to also include the biosphere, atmosphere and cryosphere.
    
    Author: Rens Van Munster (DIIS Danish Institute for International Studies)
  - Conservation by ruination: The toxic geopolitics of Kalama Atoll
    
    Through the rubric of “conservation by ruination,” this paper examines the case of Kalama Atoll (named Johnston Atoll by the U.S.), an unincorporated U.S. territory 800 miles southwest of the Hawaiian Islands, to explain how contamination and conservation work together to enlist an ecology into a continuous geopolitical claim. Over a period of 165 years, in furtherance of the U.S. imperial project, guano entrepreneurs, conservation scientists, and military researchers alternately ruined, conserved, and engineered Kalama into a conservation frontier and a laboratory for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons testing, storage, and disposal. Within the uneven, variable, and continuous process of U.S. imperial formation, ecological ruination at Kalama produced spaces of exception where new ecologies called for protection, and the military enjoyed greater freedom of action. Toxicity and conservation are not just two sides of the same imperial coin; they are often congruent and work in tandem. The destruction itself is part of the conservation, where what is ultimately conserved is empire itself. Going beyond the growing body of literature on military environmentalism (or green militarism), this paper considers the important role of multispecies and technoscientific assemblages in the production and conservation of imperial power.
    
    Authors: Kyle Kajihiro (University of Hawaii at Manoa) , Gitte du Plessis (Tampere University)
  - French Nuclear Colonialism in the Pacific: Ruination, Nostalgia, and Post-Colonial Politics of Remembering on the Hao Atoll, French Polynesia
    
    Although France’s Centre for Experimentation in the Pacific (CEP) has faced local and global criticism for testing 193 atomic devices in French Polynesia from 1966 to 1996, many of the 1,200 residents of the Hao atoll feel nostalgic about their nuclear military past. The Hao population experienced substantial socio-economic change when their atoll was transformed into a major military-logistic base for France’s nuclear testing program. On the local level, the CEP represents an agent of positive change, introducing lucrative job opportunities, free access to electricity, and a vibrant island life with nightclubs and numerous leisure activities. Based on ethnographic research conducted on the Hao atoll in fall 2019, this paper examines the interplay between nuclear nostalgia, the unseen nature of radioactive pollution, and the enduring power of the French nuclearism discourse. Using an anthropological lens, this paper shows the extent to which colonial Cold War nostalgias underlie calculated, imperialist memory politics, masking the nuclear realities of decades of ruination and slow violence. I argue that nostalgia for the nuclear testing era needs to be understood as a means that has been shaped and exploited by the French State and its military for the legitimization of its nuclear testing program. My study offers an alternative analytical angle to the general understanding of how people experience and make sense of the radioactive afterlife of the Cold War in French Polynesia.
    
    Author: Lis Kayser (Danish Institute for International Studies DIIS)
  - Empire as Laboratory: An Eco-Political History of U.S. Imperialism at Kalama Atoll
    
    Roughly 870 miles from Hawai’i lies Kalama atoll, an unorganized, unincorporated territory of the United States (what others may refer to as Johnston Atoll). Merely fifty square miles, the atoll has been claimed, dredged, bombed, and polluted by the U.S. military. Conducting an ecological-political history of the atoll, we analyze how the alleged smallness and remoteness of the atoll has allowed the U.S. military apparatus to destroy it in order to meet the needs of empire, by carrying out toxic testing and storage on the atoll. In doing this, and inspired by Epeli Hau’ofa, we provide a counter-history in which we propose a spatial and political perspective of bigness rather than smallness, which allows an alternative rendering of Oceania than the one championed by U.S. understandings. We show how the representation and folding of space helps to hide imperial power. Our analysis of the topology of Kalama Atoll significantly adds to the understanding of the U.S. empire’s anatomy and the role that islands, and particularly the uninhabited Guano islands, have played in the production of American security and sovereignty. Second, through this typology, we show how empire can be a continuous laboratory as opposed to a grand scheme or plan. Our analysis shows that empire can be contingent, accidental, and incomplete. With these contributions, we hope that this presentation helps open up alternative readings of and relationships with places that are seemingly predetermined by empire as places of exploitation, nothingness, or laboratory-like experimentation.
    
    Authors: Kenneth Gofigan Kuper (University of Guam) , Cameron Grimm (University of Hawaii at Manoa)
- 20:30 → 21:30
  
  Conference event / Postgraduate Network Quiz Room 1
  
  Speaker: Tom Vaughan (Aberystywth University)
Tuesday 22 June
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / A Changing Global Nuclear Order Room 1
  
  Sponsor: Global Nuclear Order Working Group
  
  Convener: Considine Laura (University of Leeds)
  
  Chair: Considine Laura (University of Leeds)
  - Essential Attributes of Future of International Studies in the Realm of Global Governance: A Case Study of Chaotic Global Nuclear Governance
    
    The most significant aspect of the future of international studies lies in the generation of acceptable definitions, rules and agreements. In this new age of ever-increasing wave of globalization, explicit understanding of global governance with acceptable definitions, rules and agreements have become a necessity. Therefore, the central puzzle that this study seeks to delve in is that how the lack of generation of essential attributes like accurate definitions, rules and agreements by the field of international studies makes multiple complex layers of engagement in global governance chaotic, anarchic, less effective and sometimes complete failure. This study has taken the case study of current chaotic global nuclear governance which is a multilayer involvement of different nations through different modes like treaties, agreements, initiatives etc. This multilateral unbinding chaotic arrangement has failed in prohibiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Therefore, this paper analyses the ideological underpinnings set and spread by the field of international studies and its success and failure.
    
    Author: Silky Kaur (Research Associate)
  - Forget 'international' nuclear order? The African National Congress, South Africa's liberation struggle, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty
    
    South Africa’s decision to support an indefinite extension of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) at the 1995 Review and Extension Conference is an important moment in non-proliferation history. Conventional wisdom assumes that this was a dramatic volte-face in Pretoria's stance towards the global nuclear order, since the African National Congress (ANC) had historically been highly sceptical of the NPT, perceiving it as unjust and hypocritical. This incomplete account is rooted in a partial understanding of South Africa's nuclear experience which concentrates narrowly on 'statecraft', neglecting the deeper dynamics of the ANC's historic liberation struggle.
    
    Through an analysis of the liberation movement's international campaign against the apartheid bomb, I offer an alternative view on what led Pretoria to support the NPT's extension. The ANC's purported scepticism of the NPT was not a universal principle: it was contingent on the continued existence of a nuclear-armed apartheid state. Non-proliferation norms were extremely valuable to the South African liberation movement, providing a means to prosecute the domestic struggle against apartheid on the global stage. The ANC thus forged a strong commitment to the ideals of non-proliferation, and Pretoria needed little persuasion to support indefinite extension in 1995. The conclusion here is not simply a technical one about diplomacy, nor an historical footnote. It invites us to reconsider the assumed boundaries between the so-called ‘local’ and ‘global’ in world nuclear politics, and opens further avenues for critical nuclear history.
    
    Author: Tom Vaughan (Aberystywth University)
  - Thinking outside the Box: Establishing a deterrence mentoring network and building bridges to a closer alliance
    
    In an era of turbulence, new approaches to the study of deterrence need to be developed. Traditionally, the threat of the use of nuclear weapons by states has dominated deterrence strategy. Within a 21st century context, this threat still exists, but so do threats from both states and non -state actors and across a wide range of domains. Deterrence needs to adapt to address this. The challenge lies in how to overcome institutional barriers and foster a new generation of experts able to share their knowledge and expertise within different disciplines to foster innovative approaches to deterrence. The development of a deterrence mentoring network may provide a step towards achieving this. This article summarises steps that are being taken to achieve this.
    
    It is argued that a mentoring network offers the opportunity for formal and informal networks to be established between academia and policy makers, thus helping to bridge any differences in practice and gaps in understanding between these fields. Closer collaborative links between experts provides the opportunity for greater collaboration to establish new approaches to deterrence, thus helping to inform policy and make a difference.
    
    Author: Patricia Shamai (University of Portsmouth)
  - Towards a New Way of Managing Stigmatised Identities in Nuclear Governance
    
    In studying global change and identity transformation in international politics, scholars have increasingly turned to research on norms as a social construction of behaviour regulation and identity management. This has led to a conceptualisation of stigma as attached to identities of global actors who refuse to follow normatively shared expectations of social conduct. However, the field of nuclear politics has largely ignored this research to particularly identify how non-compliant states manage their stigmatised identities ― after engaging in acts of nuclear deviance against hegemonic norms. By combining and building onto the existing literature of International Political Sociology, constructivist approaches in International Relations, and nuclear governance, this paper asks the question: How do stigmatised states justify and normalise nuclear non-compliance with dominant powers in the international system? In answering this research question, the paper first argues that stigma should be understood not as an attribute or a process, but rather a position of relational power dynamics that recalcitrant states occupy in contesting dominant norms. Secondly, it conceptualises a new category of stigma management as stigma redaction, whereby non-compliant nuclear states occasionally engage in corrective conduct to prevent its identity of being permanently cemented as rogue by dominant powers. Furthering our understanding of how we perceive sociological deviance in international politics through an interdisciplinary lens, this work makes an epistemological and ontological contribution in the field of International Security.
    
    Keywords: Identity, Norms, Nuclear, Social, Stigma
    
    Author: Aniruddha Saha (PhD Student at King's College London)
  - Ditching the NPT? The significance of the Non-proliferation Treaty to the generation of the new nuclear prohibition norm.
    
    Although the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) claims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and encourage more nuclear responsibility, it does so by rendering nuclear weapons acceptable. It upholds a violent status quo in which nuclear weapons remain a constant threat. Even though the treaty makes possible the very thing it is supposed to prevent, norm entrepreneurs opted to align the new nuclear prohibition norm with the NPT framework. Rather than shaming the NPT, norm makers utilised a constructive discourse in which the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) serves to complement provisions in place. This article examines the significance of the NPT to the generation of the new nuclear prohibition norm. It argues that norm entrepreneurs harnessed the legitimacy of the NPT to construct the appropriateness of the TPNW, mitigating the fear of newness, creating a positive momentum of inquiry grounded in institutional identity, and neutralising the action of norm antipreneurs. The study is grounded in the constructivist tradition, but it seeks to push existing understandings about norm dynamics further. While previous studies portray stigmatisation as the core norm making strategy, this article shows that framing the new as a complement to inadequacy is an effective strategy of new norm generation. The study also engages with current debates about the value of the NPT to the future of nuclear politics; it indicates that ditching the NPT, at least in the short term, might not be the best way to go about implementing the prohibition norm.
    
    Author: Carolina Pantoliano Panico (University of Auckland)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Historical Sociology of Empires and States Room 3
  
  Sponsor: Historical Sociology and International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: Maia Pal (Oxford Brookes University)
  
  Chair: Maia Pal (Oxford Brookes University)
  - Revolution and International Order
    
    Two assertions about the relationship between revolution and international order require re-examination. First is the view that revolutionaries for much of history have been disrupters, resisters and remakers of international order. The second is that powerful state actors, as guardians of the international status quo, approach revolution with virulent animosity in their attempts to stymie revolutionary change. I argue that both these assertions are the exception, rather than the rule. Instead of revolution and international order being on a collision course for much of the twentieth century, I show that revolutionaries and great powers have frequently engaged in processes of mutual toleration. This complicates our understandings of revolutionaries as thorough-going resisters, and of status quo powers as opponents of revolutionary change. This paper’s central claim of mutual toleration is supported empirically by a novel macro-historical dataset that maps the more than 200 revolutionary episodes that unfolded between 1900 and 2020. This dataset is crucial in elucidating when revolutionary and great power ordering projects clash or cohere, as well as why mutual toleration has been the modus vivendi patterning revolutionary-great power relations. Such findings are crucial in furthering our understandings of global resistance, international orders, as well as the role of revolution in grinding the gears of world change.
    
    Author: Catherine Hirst (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), LSE)
  - Adoption or Adaption? Globalising International Society in the Nineteenth Century and Diplomatic Practices at the Rokumeikan
    
    In recent years, a more detailed understanding was brought forward as to how the current society of sovereign states evolved. While early contributions assumed that international society originated in Europe and gradually spread globally since the nineteenth century, more recent scholarship highlighted tangled dynamics that helped often violently to globalise a European conception of international society. Particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century, these tangled, yet relatively loosely connected dynamics were replaced with concerted efforts to acquire imperial possessions. To add to these recent discussions, this paper shifts the perspective away from Europe and focuses on how the non-West engaged with this European conception of international society, arguing that it was not merely adoption but a creative adaptation to serve own political interests. To give evidence to this argument, this paper focuses on the Rokumeikan Era in Japan (1883-1887). While it has been previously established that Japan’s entry into the international society has been Janus-faced, meaning that Japan gained “civilised” status while at the same time it produced coercive policies towards “uncivilised” states, the performance of Western diplomatic practices also enabled a new Japanese elite to consolidate its rule and establish a new political Tenno-centred order, facilitating a process that had begun prior to the arrival of Commodore Perry's ships in Edo Bay (1853). Through studying the Rokumeikan Era, International Relations can continue to recount the history of the expansion of a European conception of international society as a history of creative adaption that served further domestic and regional purposes.
    
    Author: Felix Roesch (Coventry University)
  - Power Politics Among Empires
    
    Several generations of scholarship have identified European imperialism as a crucial factor in the development of the modern international system. Yet, based on a stylized conception of the ‘Westphalian-territorial state,’ traditional approaches to great-power politics do little to explain the effects of imperial expansion upon modern interstate rivalries. In this article, I seek to fill this lacuna by making three related arguments concerning the imperial dynamic of European geopolitical relations, c. 1830-1914. First, rejecting traditional ‘balance-of-power’ and ‘diplomatic history’ explanations, I situate the analysis of European power politics within an alternative a historical sociology of imperial state-formation: the emergence of transcontinental composite polities, where the combined challenge of managing dispersed territories while relying on local intermediaries generated distinct geostrategic challenges. Rather than treating foreign and diplomatic policy as the work of unitary territorial states, this historico-theoretical framework explains inter-imperial power politics as the product of struggles within disaggregated empire-states, shaped by the relations between diverse political, economic and colonial elites. Second, I present a detailed empirical study of two principal features of nineteenth-century imperial rivalries: the dynamics of ‘partition diplomacy’ and ‘peripheral competition’ which accompanied the expansion of the British empire. These power struggles centered on the contest for influence in world affairs — as in classical theories of Realpolitik — but they emerged from distinctly imperial modes of foreign policymaking, international hierarchy, and military intervention which cannot be captured by the Westphalian narrative of modern state sovereignty. Third, I focus on the feedback-effects of overseas imperialism upon the European interstate order itself. From the last quarter of the nineteenth century, imperial competition not only intensified; through a process of uneven and combined development, it also began to permeate the logic of intra-European state relations, generating power-maximizing strategies of external expansionism which ultimately shattered the traditional balance-of-power system.
    
    Author: Joseph Leigh (London School of Economics and Political Science)
  - Historical Sociology and Crisis: Capital, Empire, and Pandemics in the Maghreb
    
    This paper argues that International Relations can theorise and engage with the current global crises – IR, not in small letters, but a re-imagined and re-conceptualised IR which both places structural forms of oppression and an unsanitised history of (anti)colonialism at the heart of the analysis, and expands IR beyond its disciplinary boundaries and beyond the Euro-American nexus. Key to this argument is challenging the dualism that creates a Westphalian bifurcation between European and non-European states. This paper does so by introducing Abdallah Laroui’s concept of Dāwlā [the state] as one which addresses the linear perception of the state outside of Europe, whilst emphasising the relations of contradiction underpinning it in the Arab region, without reducing it to a racialised idea of ‘failed states’. Taking health crises as a backdrop for this argument, this paper investigates the links between pandemics, colonialism and state-formation in 1911 Morocco. 1911 was not only a year of international crisis, scramble for imperial expansion, and systematic attempts to quell resistance; it was also a year in which imperialism and capitalist accumulation have become visibly entangled with health and sanitation, resulting in 10.000 deaths in the Doukkala region alone. This paper also challenges the centralisation of state health measures as the primary solution; the primacy of these measures becomes more problematic in spatio-temporal contexts where medical imperialism and medical diplomacy have been intertwined to provide an exploitable labour force for colonial capitalist structures.
    
    Author: Meriam Mabrouk (Birkbeck College, University of London)
  - Queering the War-machine's Origin Myth: A re-evaluation of the 19th century shift away from mercenary use
    
    A Soldier/Mercenary dichotomy lies at the heart of state formation accounts, as states only established a true monopoly on the use of physical force when mercenaries were replaced by armies composed of national soldiers after the French Revolution. (Tilly 1991; Avant 2000; Percy 2006) This paper revisits this claim by subjecting it to queer intellectual curiosity. (Weber 2015) By investigating 19th century discourses on the formation of the social, I expose how the Soldier/Mercenary binary was constructed upon notions of masculinity, effeminacy, and sex. Specifically, I show how the adjective ‘mercenary’ became constituted as a noun to construct the hierarchical dichotomy between the masculine ‘soldier’ as the normative ideal and the queer ‘mercenary’ as its deviant, foreign and perverse conceptual opposite. This dichotomy served an important function in the constitution of the international, as it created a clear dividing line between the spaces of peace and development inside, patrolled by the soldier, and the unruly and warlike outside from which the ‘mercenary’ supposedly originates. Exposing the queer categories at play in, but hidden from, the war-machines origin myth thus reveals how conventional accounts of state formation in IR arrest ambiguity and stabilize heteronormative hierarchies and orders.
    
    Author: Malte Riemann (Royal Military Academy Sandhurst)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Inequalities in Bodies, Land and the Biosphere Room 2
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Convener: IPEG Working group
  
  Chair: Ben Richardson (University of Warwick)
  - The Body Politics of Poverty: Lean Times
    
    This paper explores how the political economy of poverty might be understood in terms of body politics, and discourses of the fat body in particular. Focusing on the case of the UK as one of the most economically unequal of the world's wealthy countries, the paper examines how the poor have been singled out as particularly susceptible to obesity at the exact same historical moment that hunger is on the rise due to the combined effects of austerity and Covid-19. Although a number of scholars have highlighted the centrality of distinctions between ‘responsible’ and ‘irresponsible’ citizens to neoliberal discourse and policy, scant attention has been devoted to the question of the body – and especially the fat body – in shaping these distinctions. Our aim is to show how the ongoing privatisation of public wealth has itself been made thinkable through appeals to the poor as excessive, profligate, and overweight – appeals that have also been deployed as metaphors for the state itself as overly cumbersome and ‘flabby’. Indeed, discourses surrounding fatness (from the fat individual to the fat nation) form an integral part of the logics through which the material condition of poverty – including endemic hunger – is being produced. By drawing out the connections between obesity and hunger, the paper offers a distinctive contribution to contemporary debates about poverty, neoliberalism, and the body politics of contemporary capitalism.
    
    Authors: Nicola Smith (University of Birmingham) , Amelia Morris (University of Law )
  - International Politics of bioeconomy: prospects and challenges from the Global South
    
    Bioeconomy is a novel agenda for research under-explored from International Relations (IR) or International Political Economy (IPE) perspectives. This paper will address bioeconomy from these approaches with a special focus on Argentina and the dynamics involving its development and implementation within the country. From an IR approach, and more specifically, with an IPE framework, the objective will be to identify the international drivers of bioeconomy and which international processes, dynamics and actors intervene in the development of Argentina’s national strategy on bioeconomy. The overall objective is to identify if and how core-dependency dynamics apply and which are the implications of this regarding sustainability. IR frameworks are indispensable for the analysis of the politics of global bioeconomy, while global bioeconomy sheds light on challenges that lie at the cutting edge of IR and IPE theories.
    
    Author: Melisa Deciancio (University of Muenster)
  - The Relationship between Land Reform and Development: The Case of Turkey
    
    Over the past decade, there has been a renewed interest to the role of agriculture to development. Regarding today’s developed countries’ past, almost all of them have agrarian experiences. Although the agricultural production has declined, Turkey has been a very significant agriculture sector; and the development of agricultural production equals the development of non-agricultural sectors, which means that agriculture and agricultural policies are backbone of the economy. One of the agricultural policies is land reform that is a significant prerequisite for the high growth and development. Its contribution to development can be boosted by its spillover effects in the economy. The lack of land reform is identified as one of the main structural problems of development. This study aims to analyze why Turkish land reform could not be achieved and what are the impacts of it. The political disputes and constraints on implementation, socio-economic situation of Turkey and problem of inequality will be investigated. The discussion starts off from the establishment of the modern Republic of Turkey in 1923. Especially after the Second World War, the land reform was seen as one of the important structural reforms, which must be undertaken if Turkey was to achieve its economic, and social development aims as a part of the industrialized Western Block. That’s why; the present study examines both the domestic determinants and the international dimension. First, the approaches, different perspectives and theoretical discussions on the land reform will be identified. Having conceptualized the land reform in a larger systemic context of international political economy, the land reform in Turkey and its impacts will be examined with cross-country references from East Asia, Latin America and Middle East; that comparative historical perspective will contribute and enrich to the study.
    
    Author: Ozge Taylan (METU)
  - US mobilization of Cyberspace: A critical geographical perspective
    
    Abstract
    
    Implicit in many analyses of cyberspace is the assumption that it is a globalized hyperspace with discussions debating the extent of state powers within this space. While cyberspace has an undeniable material foundation in the hardware needed to construct such a space, the question of who designs, controls and dominates this space is widely overlooked. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s conception of the state mode of production (mode de production étatique), this paper considers how the US generates cyberspace as a new kind of politco-spatial arrangement that allows the state to introduce its presence, control and surveillance. Through analysis of the evolution of public-private partnerships within the US, this paper examines the role of the US state in continually restructuring the relation between private interests and public powers to commodify and organize cyberspace. By developing some provisional ideas about the political economy of cyberspace, this article attempts to offer a critical geographical perspective of the mobilization of cyberspace as the US state’s strategy to regulate, monitor and represent this space.
    
    Author: Sulagna Basu (University of Sydney)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / International Criminal Law and Practice in Context Room 4
  
  Sponsor: International Law and Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: ILPG Working group
  
  Chair: James Gow (King's College London)
  - Legitimizing genocide in Myanmar: On the road to impunity
    
    Despite the development of a norm cluster on the condemnation of the crime of genocide, including the norm on the prevention and punishment of genocide, the non-impunity norm or Responsibility to Prosecute, and the Responsibility to Protect, the ‘crime of crimes’ continues to be committed to date often with impunity. This is often attributed to competing interests within the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) or to non-Western states’ insufficient socialization into the anti-genocide norms. However, counterintuitively, the proposed paper highlights the agency of the norm violators in legitimizing their misbehavior to international audiences. To do so, those accused of genocide contest the anti-genocide norms by exploiting the ambiguities sorrounding the definition of genocide, thus affecting the implementation of the norms. The paper therefore posits that genocide perpetrators aim to prevent a consensus on the definition of the violations as genocide from emerging within the international community, most notably the UNSC, the Secretary-General and regional organizations, consequently impeding any potential punishment measures. Despite being the most prominent case of genocide in the 21st century and numerous human rights NGOs’ calls for action, the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar has been neglected by the international community and collective action to punish Myanmar’s leaders is absent. This paper will draw on the constructivist theory of norm contestation to carry out a qualitative analysis of the discourse advanced by genocide perpetrators and those who defend them (i.e. Aung San Suu Kyi and her defense lawyers). It aims to analyze how genocide perpetrators contest the anti-genocide norms and discursively justify their use of genocidal violence by persuading their target audience and/or silencing their opponents. This paper asserts that an understanding of how genocide perpetrators legitimize their actions to international audiences provides the basis not only to account for why impunity often prevails, but also to reflect on the current state, strengths and flaws of the anti-genocide norms.
    
    Author: Cecilia Ducci (Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna)
  - The International Criminal Court, Preliminary Examinations and the Security Council: Kill or Cure?
    
    In November 2017, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensuoda, formally requested permission from the Pre-Trial Chamber to open an investigation into the situation in Afghanistan. That request was rejected in April 2019 and is currently under appeal. Afghanistan had been the subject of a Preliminary Examination (PE) since 2007, along with several others, including the situation in Iraq (involving UK citizens) and Ukraine. All three of these situations involved potentially bringing under the ICC’s purview the conduct of citizens of three of the five Permanent Members of the Security Council (P5): the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia. For the ICC, PEs offer a possible way out of its current crisis – they are touted as a mechanism for positive complementarity, a means of demonstrating the Court is not wholly and unduly focused on Africa, and a way of flexing its muscles as a tool to ‘end impunity’ for serious violations. It is, however, a risky strategy. The US reaction was especially vociferous, with US National Security Advisor, John Bolton, threatening to destroy the Court if it proceeded with the investigation into Afghanistan, and he seems to have won the first round. The reaction of the UK was more conciliatory, on the surface at least, and Russia's strategy was largely to ignore it. This paper discusses each of the situations in turn and sets the responses of the P5 members involved in the context of the international and domestic politics of international justice. We argue that these PEs are highly significant for the future of the Court, but they may just as easily ‘kill’ it, as ‘cure’ its current malaise
    
    Authors: Rachel Kerr (King's College London) , Natasha Kuhrt (King's College London)
  - Aggression, Imperialism and the Global South
    
    This paper surveys the political, moral, and legal aspects of the concept of aggression and its implications for the Global South. It argues that the European powers employed a natural-law-based universal ideal differently among themselves establishing a pluralist international society for themselves but used that same ideal to impose an unjust extra-European order upon non-Europeans. The paper argues that while the post-WWI criminalization of aggression under the new rules of collective-security enabled the victorious European imperialists to punish the alleged aggressors, these rules also allowed them to keep colonies, thus legitimizing their own colonial aggression against non-Europeans and their readmission into the global order on less favourable terms. It analyses the victorious Western powers’ resistance to a legally-binding definition of aggression and insistence on merely a moral obligation to jointly defend states against aggression, allowing them to continue to play realpolitik rendering ineffective legalist efforts to counter aggression. It especially examines post-WWII US-led Western powers’ employment of universal morality to justify aggressive wars and even more so in the post-Cold War era to continue their imperial practices in new forms. It analyzes why the ICC, despite resolving the definitional problem of aggression and activating its jurisdiction over this crime, may potentially become a UNSC’s tool to counter aggression.
    
    Author: Muhammad Ashfaq (University of St Andrews)
  - The civilising mission of international criminal justice: Queering savages-victims-saviours at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
    
    Within liberal institutionalist circles of International Relations and International Law, international criminal justice has been lauded for its commitment to universal human rights and condemnation of crimes against humanity. The (re)emergence of international criminal tribunals in the 1990s solidified this normative understanding of criminal justice as a path to the prevention and accountability of mass atrocities internationally. However, critiques from postcolonial scholars and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) have unsettled this assumption of international criminal justice as a universal site of human rights and justice. For example, critiques have been waged against the International Criminal Court (ICC) for predominantly investigating crimes committed in Africa, overlooking crimes committed by Western and European countries, often against populations in the Global South. Contemporary international criminal justice, through these critiques, is seen as a continuation of the colonial civilising mission, of distinguishing between ‘savage’ criminals, ‘hapless’ victims, and ‘paternal’ saviours. These three logics follow global hierarchies, whereby criminals and victims are located in peripheral or ‘distant’ lands, while the saviours are embodied by the Western, international community. In this paper, I trace this civilising mission at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), applying Makau Mutua’s metaphor of savages-victims-saviours to the realm of international criminal justice. More specifically, I queer this logic, arguing that the ICTY (re)produces and depends on gendered and sexualised invocations of the savages-victims-saviours trope. In this way, the ICTY extends the civilising mission of international criminal justice to ‘the Balkans’, reinforcing the distinction between the ‘unruly’ criminality in the former Yugoslavia, and the ‘civilised’ paternalism of the international community.
    
    Keywords: international criminal justice, queer theory, ICTY, postcolonial critique, Balkanism
    
    Author: Caitlin Biddolph (University of New South Wales (UNSW))
  - Torture in Spanish and British counterterrorism: from ‘reverse shaming’ to narrative contestation
    
    In counterterrorism campaigns, when do democratic states resort to torture and when do they refrain from violating this fundamental human right? This paper examines how public debate – and public silence – contribute to enabling or constraining states from getting involved in torture. Drawing on the literatures on ‘rhetorical coercion’ and ‘shaming’, I outline how international human rights bodies and domestic critics have sought to shame Spain and the UK for their involvement in torture in recent decades. The Spanish government’s response was to use what I call ‘reverse-shaming’ to shun and discredit their accusers in an attempt to shut down public debate on the issue. This enabled the authorities to torture or mistreat suspected Basque militants for decades. By contrast, the British government and its critics engaged in public contestation in which they constructed rival narratives concerning the effects of coercive interrogation. While the UK government made rhetorical manoeuvres which enabled it to continue its involvement in torture, the presence of this public debate was important for shifting the government’s position on some aspects of the issue and significantly reducing Britain’s involvement in torture over time. The overall aim of the project is to shed light on the conditions under which democratic states may be induced to respect human rights.
    
    Author: Frank Foley (King's College London)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  
  Roundtable / International Legal Order and the Middle East: National and International of a Global Pandemic beyond Regional Engagements Room 6
  
  Historically, crisis is bond to reveal aspects of chaos and inequality. This is particularly when addressing economy, lives and livelihood is to take place within the sense of sustainability and human rights. The outbreak of the pandemic has its clear implications on inequalities all around the world and beyond national limits. It is in such extraordinary times that these implications expand and become much more visible and much more acute. While, Emergency rule and governance has always been conventionally a part of the lexicon in development postcolonial contexts, the emergency of the moment exposes a much larger international inability of most systems around the world to socially, economically, and medically protect the most vulnerable in societies and clearly fail to have a sense of social security.
  
  Emergency in the last at least two decades was more often used internationally in relevance to the fight against terrorism. The novelty and unprecedented environment have been always argued to justify measures and restrictions on personal liberties and fundamental human rights. The concurrent vagueness however of the language used was enough to trigger the everlasting challenge to the hollowness of liberal legal rationales and associated international principles of temporality, proportion and necessity let alone state discretion over all of the above. Scholars of third world reading of international law argue that emergency governance as a colonial legal technique has been absorbed into the norms of international law and politics. It is in the international legal domain that it is so hard to argue rupture from the history and the end of the era of colonialism exclusion and domination. It has been argued that colonial experience in the Third World was one of the main fibres to establish the international system with regard to crises.
  
  Although, the current crisis be it of international health nature that does not discriminate, from the outset, across race ethnicity or religion, is not particularly exceptional neither novel and it will not be temporal since wider cross-sectional inequalities nationally and internationally predated this current manifestation of state of exception. However, what this crisis unveils in terms of inequality and the presence of developing reality within neo liberal states, will recondition our present and future.
  
  This study will consider, inter alia, the reality of economic and social rights in the Arab world it will highlight the need to rethink social structures at further international level beyond the countries of the region. It will explore how the pandemic of Covid 19 has magnified existing economic grievances and exacerbated their effect throughout the world beyond states that are characterised with development issues . The discussion seeks to engage with the role of international institutions in offering a form of coordination and protection (pursue new practices?) and to whether this part of the world could afford the same kind of exceptional measures expected by international regulations in other countries and the consequences of these measures on economic and social securities throughout the world.
  
  For this purpose, the roundtable will explore the range of responses offered by countries in the region and beyond such as responses in Europe and UK . To understand these responses, the roundtable will attempt to reflect on available International policies and geopolitical contexts. The focus on the area’s policies will be addressed within three categories of states; states of political fragility (such as Palestine, Syria, Yemen and Libya), states of economic fragility (High debt, the size of informal economy and budget deficit such as Lebanon and Tunisia) and oil exporting states (States in the Arab Gulf). At the international level, international policies in the UK and some European states will be addressed to stand at divergence and convergences offered by the available International norms and the structures of the legal order.
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Chair: Dina Hadad (Kuwait International Law School)
  
  Participants: Darina Mackova (Independent Researcher) , Nida Shoughry (Mandel Center for Leadership in the North) , Anna Chronopoulou (Westminster University ) , Luna Farhat (Dhofar University )
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / New Approaches to Theory, Methods and Practice Room 8
  
  Sponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: PPWG Working group
  
  Chair: Christina Oelgemoller (Loughborough University)
  - Rhymes, Rhythms and Resonances: Alternative Methods for Critical IR
    
    As part of the critique of methodologies that employ rational causality to yield generalizable conclusions, this paper will consider what Mark Twain’s aphorism – “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” – can tell us about nonlinear methods. In this way, it seeks to appreciate genealogies that rely less on chronology than they do on rhyming, resonance, and rhythm across times and places. To explore “rhyme as method,” the paper will examine the visual global politics of how China’s ideological worldview is shaped by its view of foreigners: Tang dynasty images of barbarians (618-907CE), the Korean War images of Americans, and cosmetic surgery in Taiwan today. Rather than look for direct causal relations, the paper analyzes how these images rhyme across the centuries, and resonate among different countries. E.g. Tang and Korean war images of large-nosed foreigners rhyme in their inclusion of useful difference, and exclusion of evil difference. Visual rhymes thus help us to better understand China’s “worldview” through this study of how Chinese artists and officials “view the world.” The Rhyming Method also underlines how research needs to look beyond IR as official state-to-state relations to see how popular culture and personal experience create global politics.
    
    Author: William Callahan (LSE)
  - The Everyday Aesthetics of the “Global City”
    
    In the lived space and “space of representation” of the urban, how do the social relations through which urban space is produced cultivate perceptions and aesthetic literacies of the ambience and of the everyday artefacts of cities? What is the role of these perceptions – or distribution of the sensible – in reproducing and disrupting the spaces for politics determined by international relations? The trajectory of debates concerning the city in relation to the international – from “global cities” to “planetary urbanism” – has been a fruitful site for conceptual disruptions of the territorial trap (Agnew 1994). Henri Lefebvre’s reconceptualization of contemporary capitalism through his theory of the production of space (Lefebvre 1991) and his notion of the urban revolution (Lefebvre 2003) have informed these debates; however, foregrounding the transformations of social space has not always been accompanied by a focus on the social relations of production of space, or how social space is produced. Emphasising the practices of domination of urban space – through design, planning, finance, or policy – can obscure the labour such practices are divided from. The essay mobilises the notion of “everyday aesthetics” (Saito 2007) in relation to struggles over access to housing to explore forms of internationalism and spaces of political possibility emerging from the social relations of production of urban space.
    
    Author: Matt Davies (Newcastle University)
  - Diplomatic Tales: Diplomacy and Myth in Brazil
    
    In 2007, Iver Neumann published the article “’A Speech That the Entire Ministry May Stand for or’: Why Diplomats Never Produce Anything New”. There, Neumann argues that working routines and practices result in a high level of cohesion within the diplomatic corps; consequently, changes are to be initiated by politicians, not by diplomats themselves. After Jair Bolsonaro’s took office as Brazilian president (2019), the right-wing orientation of the government indeed changed the course of Brazilian diplomacy, supporting Neumann’s claims. However, the official discourse did not follow the change in practices: the new foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, has reaffirmed his loyalty to Brazilian diplomatic tradition. In this article, I argue that such disconnection – new practices, same discourses – is a result of the mythical quality of the diplomatic discourse: it is a ‘second-order semiological system’ (Bathes, 2002). Relying on discourse analysis, I show how diplomats repeatedly have resignfied ideas such as ‘tradition’ and ‘autonomy’ in the last decades through changing the signifying attached to these commonly used terms over time. To study diplomacy as myth construction can shed light on the cracks of the diplomatic temple, advancing the understanding of diplomatic practices.
    
    Author: Felipe Estre (King's College London & University of Sao Paulo)
  - Anarchy within sovereign states: Can forgetting IR theory help?
    
    Academic disciplines are powerful mechanisms to direct and control the production and diffusion of discourses and knowledge. The unprecedented events that dawned upon humankind in the present times essentially exposed the cracks and issues with the orthodox nature of controlling the production and diffusion of knowledge. The tool is used to set up the propaganda for a divisive ruling. The systems of exclusion that have been sustained through the academic disciplines have systemically subjugated the marginalised. In India, there has been a visible shift towards majoritarian politics and sectarianism. BJP since its re-election in 2019 has been implementing a series of Hindu nationalist policies that have been perceived as majoritarian, communal, and intolerant in many domestic and international quarters.
    Abrogation of Article 370, implementation of National Register of Citizens (NRC), enacting Citizenship Amendment Bill together with NRC are a few laws and policies used in this regard. The popular support for these divisive and biased laws has striking similarities with the propagandist policies of Hitler’s Germany. In “Mein Kampf,” Hitler wrote that propaganda “must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. This paper seeks to interrogate the role of knowledge creation in populist politics and the role that dominant discourses on security play in facilitating the rise of majoritarian politics. It will also look at how the task of forgetting IR can help in escaping the vicious circle of legitimizing majoritarian politics.
    
    Authors: Rehana Manzoor (Jawaharlal Nehru University) , Mohnish Mohammad (Jamia Millia Islamia)*
  - Assembling China’s ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative: A Post-Structural Critique
    
    The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is predominantly understood as China’s global strategy to address its economic problems, pursue its security interests, and seek global hegemony. However, little attention has been paid to underlying assumptions, discursive performances, and constitutive effects that made a global BRI possible. By applying assemblage thinking, the paper explores the emergence and contingency of BRI, setting out to understand the ways in which different factors were framed and constructed so as to constitute a global BRI. The paper argues that BRI was a socially constructed assemblage of diverse elements developed through a multi-level and non-linear process, rather than a purely rational product resulting from a top-down policymaking process. In other words, by breaking down what the Chinese government has claimed about BRI into its component parts, this paper has found no inherent essence, being global, open, and cooperative as such, to BRI. Instead, this global BRI was an emergent assemblage, largely constituted through three interconnected stages, and was contingent, subject to the influence of discursive constructions, practices, and material entities such as geography and technology. This assemblage-based post-structural analysis contributes to the understanding of BRI via the assemblage of a variety of practices, discourses, human agents, and non-human actants. More importantly, it enables the researcher to explore policies like BRI which are both broad and abstract precisely because of the interweaving of domestic and international politics.
    
    Author: Ran Hu (University of York)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / The Evolution of US Security Strategy Practice Room 7
  
  Sponsor: US Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: USFP Working group
  
  Chair: Jonny Hall (London School of Economics and Political Science)
  - Thinking biographically: the US Passport Office, Cold War security and bureaucratic agency
    
    In the aftermath of WWII, the travelling American emerged as a hotly-debated domestic and foreign policy concern. While some political actors sought to restrict the circulation of ‘subversives’ to and from the United States, others imagined travel as an opportunity to project American political power and prestige as part of a broader ‘cultural’ Cold War. Central to these constructions of American travel was the US Passport Office, which during the 1950s and 60s underwent an unprecedented expansion under the directorship of Frances Knight, then one of the most high-profile and controversial figures within the State Department. Yet in stark contrast to other cold warriors, Knight is now almost entirely forgotten. Similarly, although the denial of passports to communists is well-documented, the ‘productive’ role of the Passport Office in waging Cold War — i.e. producing travel — has been underexamined in political and historical scholarship.
    
    This paper harnesses detailed archival research at the US National Archives and Library of Congress to accomplish two specific goals. First, illustrating the central role of both the US Passport Office and Director Frances Knight in creating and shaping American travel. Second, demonstrating the value of biography specifically — and historical research more generally — for scholars of security.
    
    Author: Catriona Gold (University College London)
  - The Impact of the Unconventional Use of a Trust-based Institution: President Carter’s use of the Moscow-Washington Hotline
    
    Existing scholarship has established that the Moscow-Washington hotline has been an informal institution built on interpersonal trust to bridge interstate distrust in times of international crises and has predicted that the trust-based function of the hotline would not be available if not used in a crisis. This paper subjects this prediction to an empirical analysis, examining the impact of the hotline’s unconventional use on the two trust domains it is linked to: interstate and interpersonal. It argues that, as predicted, in the interstate domain it will not fulfil its role as a trust-based institution. Devoid of its symbolic meaning, the hotline will revert to being no more than a communication device, pulling leaders back into the domain of interstate distrust. We also find that unconventional hotline communication also impacts the interpersonal domain by not only contributing to trust judgements but also by the nature of responses to hotline messages following the ebb and flow of the interpersonal relationship between leaders. This is not only the first analysis of President Carter’s use of the Hotline, but it also contributes to the understanding of the impact of institutional innovation on the use of informal institutions, an analysis of which is so far lacking in politics and international relations.
    
    Authors: Agnes Simon (Masaryk University)* , Eszter Simon (Nottingham Trent University)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Transnational authoritarianism and second-generation diasporas: Between repression, co-optation and legitimation Room 5
  
  Sponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group
  
  Conveners: Arne F. Wackenhut (University of Gothenburg) , Camilla Orjuela (University of Gothenburg)
  
  Chair: Fiona Adamson (SOAS University of London)
  
  Discussant: Fiona Adamson (SOAS University of London)
  - Eritrea’s Chosen Trauma and the Legacy of the Martyrs: The impact of postmemory on political identity formation of second-generation diaspora Eritreans
    
    In the collective memory of Eritreans, the liberation struggle against Ethiopia from 1961 and 1991 symbolizes the heroic fight of their fallen martyrs against Ethiopian oppression. After independence, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front did not fulfil its promises of a better life for all Eritreans, but rather created an autocratic regime that disregards the rule of law. Astoundingly, this government, which has ruled without constitution and never held elections and is infamous for its human rights violations, is still adored by many second-generation diaspora Eritreans who grew up in democratic countries in Europe, the Americas and Australia. Our paper examines political identity formation processes of diaspora Eritreans and is based on a social media analysis, an evaluation of Eritrean government media outlets, long-term observation among Eritrean diaspora communities and recent fieldwork among Eritrean diaspora and refugee communities in Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK.
    We hypothesize that the mindset of second-generation diaspora Eritreans is influenced by collective memories of the armed struggle transmitted through generations and by a government-constructed narrative of Eritrean nationalism. We engage with bodies of literature exploring the political importance of collective trauma in post-conflict societies and apply two theoretical notions, ‘postmemory’ and ‘chosen trauma’ to explain how the government’s narrative of Eritrean history produced a culture of nationalism through the glorification of the martyrs that strives in the diaspora. This narrative and the trauma experienced by their parents, including the “survivor’s guilt” of those who fled the country rather than participating in the armed struggle created experiences of postmemory among the second-generation diaspora that have influenced their worldview.
    Today, Eritrea is one of the most diasporic nations worldwide with about half of the population living abroad due to adverse living conditions inside the country which have caused a mass exodus during the past two decades. At the same time, the Eritrean government has formed strong transnational organizations with the purpose of controlling the diaspora, organizing them politically and extracting a diaspora tax and other donations from them. We demonstrate how Eritrean pro-government activists abroad utilize US-born artists with Eritrean roots who have recently discovered their Eritreanness such as actress Tiffany Haddish and the late rappers Sandman Negus and Nipsey Hussle to instill long-distance nationalism and government support among the second-generation diaspora youth. These artists have reproduced the country’s collective memory of the armed struggle and Eritrean nationalism in their music and in their cultural performances. They travelled to Eritrea to connect to their personal roots, but were nolens volens used by the government to create a distorted view of the reality on the ground and to improve its own image. We conclude that the Eritrean transnational institutions and pro-government political entrepreneurs have perfected mechanisms to politically mobilize the diaspora, including the second generation, which grew up in democratic environments, but has partially internalized the collectivist ideology of their country of origin.
    
    Author: Nicole Hirt (GIGA – German Institute of Global and Area Studies)
  - Transnational Mobilization of Youth by Authoritarian Home States: Turkey’s Transnational Youth Outreach between Empowerment and Indoctrination
    
    While many aspects of state-diaspora relations have been explored widely over the last decades, the role that youth play in state-led diaspora outreach strategies remains under-researched with the exception of a handful of studies, often framed within the context of heritage tourism or long-distance activism. This article contributes to the literature regarding state-led youth mobilisation in authoritarian contexts where youth are perceived as a long-term investment for regime consolidation and survival. Focusing on the Turkish state’s recent youth diaspora policies, we explore multifaceted channels of youth outreach by the Turkish state in its European diasporas and demonstrate that, similar to domestic youth mobilization policies, diaspora youth policies tailored by transnational state apparatus contribute to authoritarian regime building in the homeland and its survival in the long run. Our analysis suggests that the image of the “ideal citizen” created by the new ruling elites has also been projected on the diasporas in Europe and these policies aim to create a loyal diaspora which mirrors the constituencies of the ruling party in Turkey and then to turn these groups into strategic assets to lobby host governments, and to sustain the current regime by co-optation, propaganda and legitimacy.
    
    Authors: Bahar Baser Ozturk (Coventry University) , Bocu Gozde (University of Toronto)
  - An (Un-)stable pillar: Second generation diasporas in an age of transnational authoritarianism
    
    Taking its point of departure in recent debates on transnational repression and diaspora engagement, this paper systematically analyzes how authoritarian regimes seek to engage/govern/control their second-generation diasporas, whilst accounting for the opportunities and space second-generation diaspora actors might have to influence authoritarian regimes. Drawing on established frameworks theorizing extraterritorial authoritarian practices, we explore the ways in which diaspora youths are either included as subjects, patriots and clients, or excluded as outlaws and traitors.
    
    While earlier research has –to a large extent– focused on the varied positions held either by regime-supporters or dissidents in the diaspora, we highlight inter-generational differences as yet another important factor in this domain. Whilst occasionally mentioned in passing, the particular positionalities and agency of second-generation diaspora actors are rarely theorized in a systematic way. This paper seeks to –at least partially– fill this gap and identifies a number of promising avenues for further empirical inquiries.
    
    Authors: Arne F. Wackenhut (University of Gothenburg) , Camilla Orjuela (University of Gothenburg)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  
  Conference event / Coffee and conversation networking sessions - FPWG; Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding WG Room 10
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / Critical Perspectives on Counter-terrorism Practice Room 6
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Conveners: Tom Pettinger (Warwick University) , Alice Martini , Raquel da Silva (ISCTE)
  
  Chair: Alice Martini
  - Public perspective of insecurity and the use of mercenaries in Nigeria: A Qualitative study
    
    Over the past decades, insecurity has been an issue of concern in Nigeria. Spanning from the Boko Haram terrorism to herdsmen attacks and kidnapping have tend to engulf the country’s landscape. Central to this concern is the paucity of research on public perspective of insecurity and the use of mercenaries as a basis for addressing the issue. This study draws on data from semi-structured interview with 53 participants recruited from Lagos states in Nigeria. Participants comprised of security representatives, non-governmental organisation, and lay members of the public. Informed by the principles of thematic analysis and a social identity theory it was found that there was a perceived sense of lack of trust for government approach in handling insecurity, resentment towards the perceived lack of support from the international community’s and a positive outlook towards the involvement of mercenaries in combating insecurity including terrorism in Nigeria. The study also found that there was a perceived disconnect with the identity of being a Nigerian and their support for the use of mercenaries. Hence, highlighting a need for existing policies to strengthen the Nigerian security apparatus in order to avoid a perceived trust for mercenaries as opposed to the states security agencies
    
    Authors: Tarela Juliet Ike , Danny Singh (Teesside University )* , Dung Ezekiel Jidong (Nottingham Trent University )* , Evangelyn Ebi Ayobi (University of Benin)
  - Italian Radical-Left Political Violence: How Gestalt Psychology Helps to Make Sense of Individual Activists’ Radicalisation Processes
    
    What can the Italian case of radical-left violence tell us about individuals’ radicalisation processes? Between the 1960s and the 1980s, Italy experienced social unrest and systemic political violence from both radical-left and radical-right groups. While existent literature contributes significant knowledge on groups’ radicalisation and how socio-political, historical, and economic factors affect the outbreak of violence, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of the how and why individuals radicalise. The intensity of violence makes the Italian case an interesting one for researching individuals’ radicalisation processes. This paper surveys personal stories of former members of (radical-)left dissenting (armed) organisations, examining how they perceived the socio-political world that they intended to change. Using narrative analysis as methodological approach, it scrutinises (auto)biographical material and interviews to explain the complexity behind individuals’ decision to use violence. It also engages with socio-psychological literature to explore the multifaceted components constituting violence. This paper finds that the system of implicit presuppositions, as defined by Gestalt psychology, can further inform us on individuals’ radicalisation. Accordingly, violence can emerge from opposing views stemming from the same implicit presuppositions, as the only way to unblock gridlocked situations. Considering the increase in society’s polarisation that have characterised 2020 and the beginning of 2021, this paper provides thought-provoking insights to consider when studying individuals’ radicalisation in different contexts.
    
    Author: Giulia Grillo (University of Kent)
  - Cooperation Dilemma in Counter-terrorism Operations
    
    What factors drive cooperation in the counterterrorism (CT) domain? Although in the last twenty years many scholars have been studying terrorism and CT, such a question has remained unanswered. Few attempts have been made, hence new researches are needed.
    The here-present paper addresses this issue, providing a twofold contribution. First, it fosters existent analyses by proposing a new theoretical framework that combines CT studies and alliances literature. Both fields have underlined different aspects, however, none of them has been able to give a satisfactory answer. By merging their most decisive insights, it is instead possible to reach a more exhaustive response. This explanation considers citizens’ role, states’ domestic structures, alongside the impact of terrorism as well as the organization of CT departments.
    Second, the theoretical framework is tested on a newly collected dataset using panel data analysis. This dataset comprehends CT bilateral agreements signed by European countries between 2002 and 2017.
    The results illustrate two important aspects. First, domestic features do matter: governments’ composition and citizens’ threat perception are pivotal factors, next to other conditions such as states’ geographical position. On the other hand, the findings show how citizens’ perception of terrorists’ threat is much more important for cooperation than the actual impact of terrorism.
    
    Author: Francesco Baraldi (Università degli Studi di Milano)
  - Exceptional Measures? Indonesia, the Militarisation of Civil Society Organisations, and the Securitisation of Maritime Trade
    
    Following the 9/11 attacks and the 2002 Bali bombings Indonesia has sought to improve the security of its ports to detect and prevent terrorist attacks. Using North Sulawesi as a case study this article focuses on explaining whether the use of militarised Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to secure Indonesian ports count as an exceptional measure and therefore proof of the securitisation of maritime trade in Indonesia, or does it suggest that the government is not as committed to securing maritime trade and Indonesian ports as it claims? In asking that question, it highlights the lack of clarity attending the concept of exceptional measures in the Copenhagen School theory of securitisation. This article argues that the government policy to entrust the security of ports to CSOs is an exceptional measure to deal with security threats and proof that a securitisation of maritime trade has taken place. The use CSOs for port security in Indonesia, however, does not reflect the CS conception of exceptional measures that highlights the suspension of regular legislative and judicial systems. Rather, the exceptional measure here points to systematic efforts to strengthen and vigorously rectify the law.
    
    Author: Senia Febrica (The University of Strathclyde, the Universitas Indonesia)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / Existentialism and International Relations II: Panel Room 5
  
  Sponsor: Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working Group
  
  Conveners: Andy Hom (University of Edinburgh) , Cian O'Driscoll (Australian National University) , Liane Hartnett (La Trobe University)
  
  Chair: Liane Hartnett (La Trobe University)
  
  Discussant: Daniel Brunstetter (UC Irvine)
  - Disappointed Hope: Theorising the Critical Import of Disappointment among the Arab Spring Resisters in Egypt
    
    A growing literature in peace-building studies has examined the challenge that the ex-resisters’ negative emotions, including disappointment, pose to the creation of sustainable peace in post-conflict societies. However, these accounts focus primarily on evaluating negative emotions in terms of the stability of a post-conflict political order, while failing to account for their ability to inspire political action against the remainders of past violence and oppression. The paper fills this gap by examining the politically transformative potential of ex-resisters’ disappointment and interrogating how it affects the resisters’ horizon of hope. To that end, I theorise disappointment as an existential feeling that manifests itself as a way of being in the world and reframes our perception of the possibilities for political action. I argue that ex-resisters’ disappointment can lead to what Ernst Bloch called “educated hope,” a hope embodying a renewed commitment to fighting injustice that remains tempered by an ever-present possibility of failure. I demonstrate the prescient political relevance of this theoretical exploration by engaging with two cinematic representations of the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt: the documentary The Square (2013) and the feature film Clash (2016). The two films show how deep disappointments over the failed promise of revolution did not mark the end of activism, but inspired a new hopefulness about the however uncertain potentials of political action in the present.
    
    Author: Maša Mrovlje (University of Vienna)
  - ‘No One Around To Shut the Dead Eyes of the Human Race’ : Sartre, Aron, and the Limits of Existentialism in the Nuclear Age
    
    The Nuclear Age is said to be defined by the notion of existential threat. The ability to destroy human societies in their entirety through the use of a single class of weaponry raises some of the most profound questions about human existence that philosophers have ever grappled with. Unsurprisingly, existentialism is often regarded as being a philosophy that found its feet in the shadow of the bomb. This article explores the possibilities and limits of an existentialist approach to the politics and ethics of addressing nuclear dangers by contrasting the views of two figures central to the founding of existentialism: Jean-Paul Sartre and Raymond Aron. Sartre responded to the existential threat of nuclear war with moral outrage, critique of the “unreality” of the Cold War politics driving the arms race, and the existentialist call to reject societal expectations relating to warfare. Aron, famously rejected existentialism and turned instead to outlining the norms of international society that might restrain the choices of nuclear-armed decision makers. The article argues that the ongoing, and even growing, threats posed by nuclear weapons highlight the limits of Sartre’s approach as a guide to authentic existence in the nuclear age. Instead it argues in favour of Aron’s more conservative approach to strengthening the nuclear taboo for the sake of human survival in the next phase of the Nuclear Age.
    
    Author: Benjamin Zala (Australian National University)
  - Existentialism and Ontological Insecurity
    
    This paper explores existentialist contributions to ontological security studies. Existentialist philosophy underpins much of the psychological and sociological resources for ontological security as it has been used in International Relations, but only recently have ontological security scholars appreciated and reappraised this influence. Our paper argues that this appreciation needs to be foregrounded considering depth and breadth at which a global ‘critical situation’ like the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has called into question more than just daily routines but meaningful existences. The paper provides a quick inventory of existentialist treatments and influences on ontological security studies, and then suggests a way forward for ontological security studies with the concept of ‘work on myth’ as outlined by Blumenberg and popularized by Chiara Bottici. This can be situated as another ‘post-Giddensian’ account of ontological security, to go alongside but also separate from the Lacanian turn of recent years. The paper seeks to provide a necessarily deeper but also broader account of ontological security studies going forward.
    
    Authors: Xander Kirke (Glasgow Caledonian University) , Brent Steele (University of Utah)
  - IR’s Roads to Freedom. Reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s Trilogy as an International Relations Text.
    
    Jean-Paul Sartre’s Roads to Freedom trilogy (The Age of Reason, The Reprieve, and Iron in the Soul) is perhaps the best known work of his fictional output. While the first book concentrates on personal interactions between the main characters (most of whom appear in the other two books to a greater or lesser degree), the last two are firmly rooted in external events: the war scare and Munich agreement of 1938 (The Reprieve), and the collapse of France in 1940 (Iron in the Soul). As a result, the trilogy has much to say on international relations, both in its specific historical context, and in the wider lessons of how its characters face these unfolding events.
    
    In this paper I will use Roads to Freedom to tease out an existential approach to IR that is specifically rooted in the historical events of the late 1930s and the 1940 crisis sparked by the fall of France. Here, questions on the meaning of events, and the different ways that we can face them, even when the meanings are contested and unclear, come to the fore. While interpretations of Roads to Freedom often settle on the climactic final scene of the first part of Iron in the Soul – where Mathieu’s seemingly futile decision to help hold up the inevitable German advance by fifteen minutes brings a deferred meaning of sorts to his life – the trilogy is rich in different approaches chosen by its diverse range of characters.
    
    Author: Lucian Ashworth (Memorial University)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  
  Conference event / Michael Mulvihill Art Exhibition - 'Noise to Signal' and 'Worldly Noise and Electronic Atmospheres' Room 8
  
  Speaker: Michael Mulvihill (University of Newcastle)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  
  Roundtable / PGN-sponsored roundtable: Meet the Editors I Room 1
  
  An introduction to the BISA journals.
  
  Sponsor: Conference/Management
  
  Chair: Tom Vaughan (Aberystywth University)
  
  Participants: Martin Coward (University of Manchester) , Edward Newman (University of Leeds) , Tom Vaughan (Aberystywth University)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  
  Conference event / Polity book launch: Anthony King's 'Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century' (publishing July 2021) Room 9
  
  Speakers: Prof. Anthony King (University of Warwick), Prof. Lawrence Freedman (King's College London, Emeritus Professor)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  
  Roundtable / Prejudice and the Role of Different Actors in the Spiralling of the Securitization of Migration Room 3
  
  This year has witnessed different exceptional situations, but possibly all bond by some attitudinal reticence to combining the idea of inclusion, solidarity and care when dealing with novelty or alterity. This attitude can easily be referred to the idea of prejudice, a self-referent cognition or mind-set that tends to automatically exclude others from enjoying the same human conditions, rights and benefits that the prejudicial Self reserves to its kin. More generally, it is possible to consider that prejudice is often one of the root causes of many escalation of tensions, and the impossibility to resolve some common challenges for blinding ideas anchored to a cognition of the nation that tends to exclude rather than include different components. A cognition alike is also to be disentangled in the securitization of migration. By addressing the role of different actors in the spiralling of the securitization of migration, this roundtable wishes to examine how and why they contribute to the spiralling process of the securitization of migration.
  The participants will engage in a discussion for the whys the securitization of migration is not a linear process but a spiralling phenomenon, which involves different actors in a spiralling progression that both self-fulfils and reinforces migration-security nexus’ dynamics. We propose to analyze a variety of categories to clarify which ontological and epistemological stances can contribute to widening our understanding of such a process. In particular, we will address the intelligible position that prejudice takes in this spiralling process, for which a variety of actors enact policies, practices, techniques and narratives that contribute to both securitizing migration and reinforcing its nexus with crime, and the consequent necessity of a management of “migration crises”.
  
  Sponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group
  
  Chair: Christian Kaunert (University of South Wales)
  
  Participants: Valeria Bello (Blanquerna Faculty of Communication and International Relations – University Ramon LLull (Barcelona, Spain)) , FOTEINI KALANTZI (University of Oxford) , Stefania Panebianco (University of Catania, Italy) , Jef Huysmans (Queen Mary, University of London) , Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert (Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / The Global Circuits of Social and Economic Subjugation Room 7
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: Sharri Plonski (Queen Mary University of London)
  
  Chair: Sharri Plonski (Queen Mary University of London)
  - Who owes to whom – unsettling hierarchies in debt relations
    
    During the last two decades IR theory has been increasingly challenged to become more global, thus departing from a long tradition of interpreting the world from a parochial Western perspective. This ‘global turn’ in IR also holds true for political economy analysis where especially postcolonial studies contributed to broadening the discipline by demonstrating the centrality of colonialism and race in capitalist development (Shilliam, Bhambra). This opening can also be observed with regard to debt relations, with conceptual and empirical contributions only starting to reveal how debt has been used as an instrument for dispossession and the exercise of imperial power and how this reverberates in today’s political economy.
    While Marxist works and dependence theory teach us a great deal on the role of nation states and powerful institutions, in this case public and private creditors, in the making of the international debt regime and its normalisation, they usually start their analysis from the perspective of Europe and tend to remain in old epistemes, with dichotomies of labor-capital and center-periphery remaining central categories of analysis.
    This contribution seeks to broaden the analysis by bringing together insights from the Black Radical Tradition, feminist thought, sociology and anthropology. This allows for an interpretation of debt relations beyond the nation state and aggregate national income statistics and questions the complex ways in which racialised and gendered bodies are involved in the formation of debt relations and its contestation. It demonstrates how ideologies of hierarchisation and othering appear as causes for differential positioning within these relations while simultaneously being the material outcome of violent processes of extraction through the debt regime.
    Hence, this paper attempts a socio-historical analysis of debt-relations by 1) tracing debt relations back to the early stages of capitalism, 2) extending the notion of the economic beyond aggregate indictors like GPD growth and 3) repoliticising debt relations through questions of equity and justice, which were occluded before by market ideologies.
    Keywords: Debt Relations, Postcolonial studies, Intersectionality, Racial Capitalism, Political History
    
    Author: Sabrina Keller (University of Kassel)
  - Empire, Power, and Status-Seeking in International Relations: A Case for a Post-Colonial Agenda
    
    The literature on status-seeking in International Relations (IR) is shaped by rationalist assumptions, even when the focus is on ideational and perceptual dimensions of status-seeking. These assumptions play an important politico-epistemological role by normalising, and therefore erasing, colonial and imperial foundations and determinants of contemporary status-seeking politics. They de-historicise and de-socialise ’status’. This paper argues that a post-colonial perspective not only unravels the Euro-centrism of status-seeking debates in IR, but also can give rise to a critical research agenda to study the post-colonial politics of status. This new agenda focuses on how historically-formed social power hierarchies plays out today within the Euro-centric global order, problematises the developmentalist logic that is often goes unchallenged, and opens up an inclusionary analytical space to understand social forces and states that have been conventionally excluded from the debates on status politics in IR. A post-colonial critique of status politics contributes to the efforts to challenge the pervasive power of exclusion and erasure that has been determining the boundaries of IR since its inception.
    
    Author: Ali Bilgic (Loughborough University)
  - Necropolitics at large: Pandemic Politics and the Coloniality of the Global Access Gap
    
    This paper advances a conceptualization of delayed and uneven access to pharmaceutical products worldwide, proposing that the global access gap can be considered Necropolitics at large: a generalized Necropolitics predicated on negligence and acquiescence to the fatal implications of global inequalities. I begin by showing that the access gap has defined pharmaceutical markets since the mid-1990s. Measures to correct this problem such as the 2001 Doha declaration remain weak and underutilized. I then discuss how the global political economy of distribution of pharmaceutical products, including pricing, is influenced by the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement under the World Trade Organisation. I argue that the implications of this gap are ignored in Western capitals because colonial legacies and continuities, including nascent racism, shape pandemic politics. Privileged access to medication and vaccines for select Western countries is codified as a matter of course, while access for the rest of the world is conditional on philanthropy. Meanwhile, bolstered by global governance, pandemics always present opportunities for pharmaceutical manufacturers. This article contributes a framework to reveal the order of power in global economic governance that takes seriously the death caused by the global access gap.
    
    Author: Eric Otieno Sumba (University of Kassel)
  - Historicising Data Colonialism: Indigenous Data Sovereignty and The Māoris
    
    Data has become an important commodity in the 21st century. Particularly in the age of Covid-19 data concerns are essential to consider not just from a security perspective but from the who, why and how of data. Who has control over what kind of data about which groups is an important consideration for social sciences. Particularly when thinking about the control asserted by historically dominant groups over others, it is important to consider postcolonialism in the data perspective. This paper examines theories of data colonialism in indigenous populations. It looks at the historical control of indigenous data in colonial hands and contextualises it in the framework of indigenous data sovereignty. The paper will also briefly look at how these theories come alive in the Māori tribe of New Zealand (henceforth referred to as Aotearoa). While there has been significant work done on data colonialism, there is a dearth of literature on looking at this phenomenon in indigenous populations. Tahu Kuktai and John Taylor have edited a groundbreaking volume on indigenous data sovereignty, however, the relevance of this paper comes from trying to fill the gap between theories of colonialism, and that of indigenous data.
    
    The paper relies on qualitative secondary research on theories of colonialism and sovereignty along with the role of data in the same. The main argument of the paper is that indigenous data should be in control of indigenous sources to ensure that there is decolonisation in the truest sense.
    
    Author: Jahnavi Mukul (Ashoka University)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / The Visual, Visible and Virtual Politics of Security Room 2
  
  Sponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: PPWG Working group
  
  Chair: PPWG Working group
  
  Discussant: Kodili Chukwuma (University of East Anglia)
  - 'It’s like we’re blind': autonomous weapons systems as vision machines
    
    Drone warfare as the epitome of remote use of force dominates a rich theoretical debate of international relations and international security studies for more than a decade. It often forms part of the ‘visual turn’ in security studies, highlighting the manifold and complex human-machine interactions in practices of war. The recent emergence of novel weapons technologies that arguably represent an ‘algorithmic turn’ in International Relations open a new but contested analytical field. This paper discusses the contours of a possible algorithmic turn at the example of the debate on autonomous weapons systems (AWS) by arguing for the importance of assessing the impact of technological advancements for decision making. Drawing on the conceptual ideas of Paul Virilio, the paper shows how fixed conditions of time, space, and speed are altered and challenge established insights from drone studies and beyond. The paper argues that the conceptual awareness of an algorithmic turn has implications for the discipline of IR as a whole.
    
    Author: Hendrik Huelss (University of Southern Denmark)
  - Constitutive Security Practices: Cyberspace and the State
    
    A principle theme of recent international relations scholarship has been the (re)emergence of state sovereignty in steering through the challenges of a modern globalized world. This has been particularly notable in discussions on cybersecurity, once considered a non-traditional area of security, now widely regarded as a prominent area of national security. Still, despite the preoccupation with ‘national’ security and ‘national’ strategies, these arguments have largely overlooked the role of the state beyond traditional definitions of sovereignty. This paper attempts to address this gap by adopting a poststructuralist understanding of the state as being constituted within discursive practices and actions, therefore politically provisional and contested as opposed to a self-evident entity that precludes political activity. Through discourse analysis of key cybersecurity policy documents released by the US, I consider how particular rhetorical frames facilitate state articulations of cyberspace as a delineated space that ultimately serve as a “spatial strategy” to affect, influence and control cyberspace. I argue that the emergence of such political spaces result in the construction of cyberspace as a constitutive space for the state where cybersecurity is imagined, premeditated and performatively enacted. Thus, employing a more critical interpretation of cybersecurity policies this paper provides a useful alternative to conventional problem solving, policy oriented analysis.
    
    Key Words: cybersecurity; poststructural theory; critical security studies; performativity; sovereignty; states
    
    Author: Sulagna Basu (University of Sydney)
  - ‘Everything is virtually true’: the French DGSE’s social theory of intelligence in Le Bureau des légendes
    
    Popular culture is an increasingly respectable field in the study of world politics. While having debated how popular culture ‘matters’ for world politics, most IR scholarship still treats reality and fiction as two distinct orders of representation. We argue that because of the secrecy surrounding intelligence services’ activities, the reality/fiction binary is untenable with regards to producing knowledge within and about it. Funded by the French Ministry of Defence, the spy-thriller series Le Bureau des légendes has been acclaimed by intelligence practitioners for its realistic depiction of the French external intelligence agency DGSE and the foreign countries it interacts with. Drawing on poststructuralist and visual approaches to IR, we argue that the series – as a mouthpiece of the French intelligence community – combines two major French social theorists, Derrida and Latour, in a soft power move that theorises intelligence practice around the concept of legend. The legend is both a story asserted as true and a description that makes a map intelligible. Through case studies of the series’ portrayal of Russia and of technology, we explore how it deconstructs the French Self and the binaries of good/evil, national/foreign, true/fabricated. Actor-network theory (ANT) helps showing the DGSE as superior in its collaboration with nonhuman objects, technologies, languages, cultures and places, in an explicit comparison with the American CIA. Combining these insights, we suggest that Le Bureau des légendes is not a fictional representation of intelligence, but is, in itself, an intelligence practice.
    
    Authors: Joakim Brattvoll (European University Institute) , Vic Castro (University of Copenhagen )
  - The Practice and Politics of Oscillatory Transparency – Jean Baudrillard & the Contemporary Military Memoir
    
    The contemporary military memoir has – of late – become a central focus of much work in the fields of International Relations, Critical Military/Security Studies, as well as Feminist and Literary Theory. So far, however, very little has been said about the place of ‘visibility,’ and/or ‘transparency,’ therein. This in many ways seems strange given that such objects are routinely and manifestly sold to the public on the basis of their claim to the harrowing ‘true story’ of someone who was ‘really there.’ Indeed, from the point of public perception, these texts would seem like the ultimate tool of communal-knowing – an object which promises to ‘lift the veil’ on the privileged, or secret, knowledge of national-security. This project is aimed at thinking-through these claims. Beginning from Jean Baudrillard’s work on ‘simulation,’ and ‘hyper-reality,’ it will be argued that, in enacting the realities of which its speaks, the military memoir does serve a certain, limited democratic-function (viz. the practice of ‘disclosure’). However, it will also be seen that there is too a violent side to this function; inasmuch as these texts do also formulate certain ‘scopic-regimes’ (Grayson & Mawdsley 2019) through which the enmity of the other is established. While this reading will inevitably position the military memoir has having a Manichaean-like political structure, that is, both a virtuous and violent politics, it will also be observed that, in furnishing the traces of its own deconstruction, these texts do have the potential – in any moment – to ‘oscillate’ between a variety of political claims, commitments, and positionalities. A reality that will thereby see them positioned as Möbius-like structures of transparency, visibility, and disclosure, and, therefore, thoroughly postmodern expressions of battlefield practices and politics.
    
    Author: Kyle Catto (Dept. of Politics – York University, Toronto, Canada)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  
  Conference event / Widening Participation panel: Vicarious Identities in the Curriculum: Examining Muslim Women - PLEASE NOTE: This panel includes WP students who are under 18; audience members are reminded to be professional and collegial when engaging Webinar Room
  
  Speakers: Alexandra Ignat (N/A), Joseph Haigh (University of Warwick), Lily Mae Barton (N/A), Mia Mattu (N/A), Saarah Khalifa (N/A), Shahnaz Akhter (University of Warwick), Tonio Induli (N/A)
- 12:30 → 14:00
  
  Conference event / Exhibitor Hall Conference Website
- 12:45 → 13:45
  
  Conference event / BISA Chair's Address and Prize Giving Webinar Room
  
  Speakers: Prof. Mark Webber (University of Birmingham), Prof. Ruth Blakeley (University of Sheffield)
- 14:00 → 15:30
  
  Conference event / KEYNOTE 2: Roundtable: Forget International Studies? - SPONSORED BY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Webinar Room
  
  Speakers: Dr Heba Youssef (University of Brighton), Dr Jenna Marshall (Universität Kassel), Dr Lata Narayanaswamy (University of Leeds), Prof. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni (University of Bayreuth), Dr Sithembile Mbete (University of Pretoria), Dr Swati Parashar (University of Gothenburg)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / (Structural) Forgetting? Secrecy, Ignorance and Power in International Studies Room 1
  
  Sponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: Clare Stevens
  
  Chair: Clare Stevens
  
  Discussant: Jutta Weldes (University of Bristol)
  - Epistemicide: depoliticizing enforced disappearances in contemporary Brazil.
    
    Police violence in Brazil is one of the highest levels in the world. Framed as lawful killing although highly contested by human rights movements, it would be reasonable to conclude these are the totality of killings perpetrated by the police apparatus in the country. However, violence in urban areas, such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo also witness cases of disappearances, which I argue, are depoliticised in opposition to “political disappearances” that have happened during the dictatorship in the country. This paper discusses enforced disappearances in Brazil applying the concept of epistemicidio developed by Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2014). The idea in this article is to explore how the episteme of political disappearances in Latin America, but especially in Brazil, during the dictatorships shaped the way disappearances are depoliticised nowadays to the point that these cases are classed under multiple categories that do not account for the specific type of violence, disappearances enact.
    
    Author: Sabrina Villenave (University of Manchester)
  - Establishing a theoretical framework for the study of racial ignorance: A case study of French state anti-racism.
    
    It is now common-sense to say that race is ‘taboo’ in France, and that French state universalism is ‘race-blind’ or ‘colour-blind’. The denial of racism in France, however, has not been studied through the lens of ignorance studies. Internationally, critical studies of race and racism have been late to take up insights of ignorance studies, and vice-versa. This paper contributes to the budding field of racial ignorance studies with a focus on state-sanctioned practices forgetting, ignoring and obfuscating racism in France.
    
    Through the analysis of the field of French state anti-racism (state-funded anti-racist organisations), this paper will theorise the denial and lack of awareness of race and racism as ’racial ignorance’, or a system in which ignorance about racism is encouraged, making racism ‘unspeakable’ to white majorities. This case study will expand and deepen discussions about the practices of ignorance involved in maintaining the racial status quo through an emphasis on institutional work.
    
    This paper will outline a theoretical framework for racial ignorance to be analysed through an emphasis on institutional work. This discussion expands existing sociological research on racial ignorance, necessary to understand its specificity in the French national context, as well as to contribute to comparative debates on the continuities and local variations of global white supremacy and global white ignorance.
    
    Author: Vera Chapiro Bernal (University of Bristol)
  - What Was Forgotten About The Interwar Years? Pan-Africanism and the ‘Leaders of the Democratic Movement.’
    
    Given the resurgent interest in decolonizing IR, this presentation examines the extent to which this discourse in the Anglo-North tends to forget interwar Pan-African thought and South Atlantic critiques of colonization. Certainly, there are theorists who do address this systematic error, and so rightly there is growing awareness of the role colonization in shaping the modern and contemporary international system, but it is unreasonable for these theorists to do all the work. Accordingly, this presentation discusses two case studies of forgetting. The first concerns how the 1919 ANC delegation, led by Josiah Gumede, to the Versailles Peace Conference was ignored by officials. The second is the lukewarm reception of CLR James’ The Case for West-Indian Self Government (1932). Later reflecting on the spirit of the interwar years, James said “there were never all told more than a dozen of us, who banded our¬selves together in 1935 to propagate and organize for the emancipation of Africa. For years, we seemed, to the official and the learned world, to be at best, political illiterates.” Through asking about the processes which deemed Gumede and James ignorant, which powers forgot them, the aim of the presentation is to prompt a discussion of which perspectives are currently deemed ‘politically illiterate’, even while international affairs may be proving the very value in their insights.
    
    Author: Scott Timcke (University of Havana)
  - The Hunt as security logic: New Reflections on the power and politics of hunting as secrecy practice through twenty years of the Global War on Terror.
    
    Existing work on the second decade of the Global War on Terror (GWoT) has focused predominantly on the politics of the drone. As this article contends, however, the United States’ targeted killing programme is better understood as fitting within a hunting security logic or social imaginary. Building on existing work, but with greater attention to longer-standing and wider cultural histories and set of practices of ‘hunting’ in US security discourses (from Indian and witch hunting to slave and communist hunting), this paper makes two interconnected arguments: First, that hunting is built on a number of intertexts that are gendered, raced, and sexed that continue to govern its subject positions, landscapes, practices, and narrative structure. Second, hunting relies and reproduces secrecy as it draws on these intertexts. Recent scholarship within critical international relations and security studies has invited a reconsideration of the power of secrecy as knowledge (un)making. Hunting helps to make this power of secrecy more evident. Drawing these two points together and using Juliet Singh (2018) postcolonial reading of the concept of ‘mastery’, this article therefore argues that hunting is a neocolonial security logic that requires mastery of the domain of secrecy. Analysing key texts associated with US manhunts in the Global War on Terror – including memoirs, official documents, speeches, and media reports – and with reference to historical studies of hunting as a US cultural practice, this article therefore lays out hunting as a security logic and security imaginary of greater significance then currently recognised within security studies.
    
    Author: Elspeth Van Veeren (University of Bristol)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / Agency, silence and voice in feminist international politics research Room 2
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Conveners: Aliya Khalid (University of Cambridge) , Georgina Holmes (University of Reading)
  
  Chair: Aliya Khalid (University of Cambridge)
  - Rethinking Silence, Gender and Power in Insecure Sites
    
    This paper will explore the role of silence in a turbulent world, made worse by the rise of a world pandemic in 2020. Much of my work has focused on masculinity, gender relations and gender hierarchies with a focus on security and development in conflict zones. More recently I have begun to explore silence not simply as a sign of disempowerment, but also as a powerful force that can operate in many ways. This approach enables a more multi-levelled understanding of silence and voice around the world. It has much to tell us about the Global North, where we prize voice and often underestimate the power of silence. By bringing a more global perspective to this argument, the impact of cultural practices and differences expand our understanding of specific cases, and highlights the importance of investigating the various ways silence and voice play out around the world.
    
    Author: Jane Parpart (University of Massachusetts Boston)
  - The Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace
    
    The silence explored in this paper emerges from a blank canvas that replaced a testimony panel at the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace in Tokyo. The testimony panel had been prepared for an exhibition of former ‘comfort women’s’ testimonies to their subjection to the ‘comfort station’ system, but was withdrawn by the survivor before the exhibition’s inauguration. While this withdrawal might be understood as evidence of the system’s continuously contested character as a hesitance among survivors to come forward to testify, it might also be understood as a foundational unsettling of the core dichotomies that sustain ‘comfort women’ discourse. Exploring themes of silence and speech; visible and invisible; and affirmation and negation, the paper understands the blank canvas as a site that not only unsettles binaries, but also scrutinizes the limitations of instrumental approaches to politics. The creative tensions that emerge in the museum visitor’s encounter with the blank canvas highlight the implications that the unsettling of core dichotomies produces as possibilities to relate to ‘comfort station’ history in the absence of stories to retell and images to mirror oneself in. Such yet unimagined relationalities unsettle binaries such as soldier and civilian; perpetrator and victim; and male and female and leave the visitor with only one possible mode of relating to this history: that of the human.
    
    Author: Anna-Karin Eriksson (Linnaeus University)
  - Exploring the Agency of Male Sexual Violence Survivors Across Contexts: Reflections on Gender and Silence
    
    In dominant global conceptions of wartime sexual violence, male survivors – if attended to at all – have thus far almost exclusively been portrayed as passive, humiliated, and indefinitely stripped of their manhood. The existing yet limited body of literature on the topic falls into a tendency of representing male survivors as silenced victims resulting in a re-victimizing narrative of voiceless, isolated, and completely marginalized male survivors without any agency. The displacement from their gendered personhood that male survivors are subjected to is therefore largely seen to also deprive survivors of their agency as a quintessential masculine trait. Yet, in our research we find that despite their gendered harms, male sexual violence survivors across different contexts also actively engage with their vulnerabilities and exercise myriad forms of agency. Drawing on empirical evidence from the former Yugoslavia and Northern Uganda, we analyse the gendered and socio-political structures that shape their agency and influence how they navigate silence and voice. We illuminate different instances in which survivors employed different forms of ‘engaged silences’ in order to navigate disclosure and to exercise control over the spatio-temporal proliferation of their testimonies. By systematically analyzing silence as a specific form of male survivors’ agency, we offer a more holistic examination of the dynamics of wartime sexual violence, contributing both conceptually and empirically to research on local/civilian’s agency in wartime and on conflict-related sexual violence.
    
    Authors: Philipp Schulz (University of Bremen) , Heleen Touquet (University of Antwerp )
  - Transforming masculinities in Fiji and strategic silence
    
    Transforming masculinities in Fiji and strategic silence
    
    Author: David Duriesmith (Department of Politics and International Relations, The University of Sheffield)
  - The subaltern as security actor: Refugees and Europe’s agenda for Women, Peace and Security
    
    N/A
    
    Authors: Aiko Holvikivi (Department of Gender Studies, London School of Economics) , Audrey Reeves (Virginia Tech)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / Authoritarianism, Conflict and Religion in International Relations Room 4
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Convener: Omer Tekdemir (Coventry University )
  
  Chair: Omer Tekdemir (Coventry University )
  
  Discussant: Zainab Mai-Bornu (Coventry University)
  - Bringing the Shi'as further in: representation, veto and resistance in confessional Lebanon
    
    In the Middle East, Lebanon is a singular example of a somewhat stable power-sharing confessional democracy; a deeply divided society reserving equal political representation for Muslims and Christians. After the 2005 Syrian withdrawal from the country, however, little international literature has been published on the widening of the grand governing coalition. Since 2006, the opposition led by Hezbollah (representing the Shi’a duo) pleaded for a so-called ‘guaranteeing third vote’, and a minority veto in cabinet was finally obtained under the 2008 Doha Agreement. Regionally, this power rebalancing speaks to the rise of the so-called ‘axis of resistance’ or ‘Shi’a Crescent’. Since then, not enough discussion has been done on the opposition’s actual behaviour in a national unity cabinet thenceforward. To that intent, this paper examines the opposition’s confrontation behaviour in the cabinet from 2005 to 2018. By tracking and analysing key moments of executive blockages and ministers’ resignations through domestic newspapers, backed up by elite interviews, I investigate the nature of the veto, to what extent, and under what contextual conditions it occurred. Results indicate that purposeful vetoes by the blocking opposition were thematic, demanded inter-sectarian alliances, and were limited to highly strategic issues . Moreover, the findings suggest that in confessional regimes of national coalition, informal genres of blockage are not thematically neither actor restricted. The post-2005 scenario shows that, in practice, highly liberal and informal genres of veto are richly enforced by the various religious communities as an instrument of representation, identity leverage, and protection of their vital communal interests.
    
    Keywords: Lebanon; confessionalism; power-sharing; Shi’ism, minority veto; consensus government; Hezbollah.
    
    Author: Natália Calfat (Universidade de São Paulo)
  - Understanding the Arab world through regionalisms: bottom-up regionalization and transnational authoritarian strengthening
    
    This presentation, in the belief that solving empirical puzzles in the so-called ‘MENA region’ calls for theoretical pluralism, will mainly draw on theoretical developments of regional studies in recent years, with a particular emphasis on departing from markedly Eurocentric and institutionalist approaches, and focusing our attention on theories applied to the Global South, namely the African continent, such as the concept of 'regime-boosting regionalism' and the different logics of bottom-up and top-down regionalization. Comparative regionalism is part of the decolonial agenda, with the aim of building together a truly global discipline of international relations. Thus, beyond exceptionalizing positivist analyses that focus on insufficient regional integration in the Arab world as a whole, the research will assess how different– state and non-state – actors have made use of both formal and informal regionalizing mechanisms, both domestically and beyond its borders, at the regional and global level. Regionalism becomes what Edward Said called a ‘travelling theory’; consequently, the presentation will also attempt at identifying the specific contours of regionalizing discursive practices in the Arab world, in a continuous dialectical process that puts in conversation both cooperative and conflictive regional dynamics.
    
    Author: Itxaso Domínguez de Olazábal (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
  - Authoritarian neoliberalism in Tunisia's pandemic response
    
    The COVID-19 crisis has demanded that governments across the world take unprecedented action in limiting the movements and constraining the everyday lives of their populations. The justification for such radical imposition on civil liberty has been the protection of public health. However, across the world and particularly across the MENA, in particular, political regimes have used coronavirus to establish ‘all forms of suppression and represent potential power grab that, even if temporary, will likely have a lasting impact on the citizen-state relationship’ (Yerkes, 2020). Such tendencies pose even more significant questions in the context of Tunisia’s fragile transition. In Tunisia, policy makers used a plethora of existing emergency powers and security measures that circumnavigate normal policy and legal frameworks to pass illiberal security measures in response to the Coronavirus crisis. Simultaneously, the state of exception is being used as a smoke screen with which to ram neoliberal economic reforms through parliament and further consolidate authoritarian neoliberalism. Authoritarian neoliberalism is a term being used by International Relations scholars that seek to engage with the increasingly illiberal and disciplinarian nature of states within the context of neoliberalism, so often conceptualised as involving the retreat of the state. Such authors argue that contemporary neoliberalism reinforces and relies upon 1) coercive state practices that discipline and criminalise oppositional social forces and 2) the judicial and administrative state apparatuses which limit the avenues in which neoliberal policies can be challenged (Tansel, 2017; Bruff ,2014). Using the conceptual framework provided by authoritarian neoliberalism, it will be shown that Tunisia’s security first approach to a public health crisis has been used to further insulate neoliberal economic policy from social and political contestation.
    
    Author: Rosa Maryon (Cardiff University)
  - Religion in Pandemic; Does “Worship” Place has Importance as a Religious Identity or Socio-Ideologically? Secularism, Ideology and Turkey Sample
    
    The main subject of this study is to discuss whether mosques, one of the most sacred places of the Muslims, were closed and prayers were not performed collectively in the current pandemic period, carrying the aspect of secularism.
    
    In the past century, every term, institution and thought, including the perception of 'religion', has become effected with a modern or postmodern understanding. When the theory of secularism is put forward, this situation has been discussed with different approaches, and of course, one of them, the approach of religion's descent from the institutions to person, draws attention in the context of this study. Sample region of Turkey as one of the most significant factors chosen in the long-term rating remained closed mosques, and 'collective prayer/worship of' through this process is carried out online.
    
    One of the most important points here is that religion has fallen off from institutions/buildings and descended on the individual. This pandemic fact has opened up space to discuss the necessity of religious institutions and places.
    
    Most importantly, this pandemic has made us question the necessity of institutions on many issues, as well as discussed its necessity and function in religious venues. Moreover, it opened up to discuss the fact why places of worship exist, whether they are really for a religious ritual or other goals and social-ideological to strength constructions.
    
    Author: Dilek Celebi
- 16:00 → 17:30
  
  Conference event / Cambridge Studies in International Relations Book Series Room 8
- 16:00 → 17:30
  
  Roundtable / Chatham House-Georgetown University School of Foreign Service sponsored roundtable: World Order in the 21st Century: Illiberal Orders, a Concert of Power, or a Western Revival? Webinar Room
  
  100 years ago many dedicated international affairs schools in research universities and think tanks were founded to educate students and devise solutions to the problem of war, peace and international order. A century later, a series of global shocks have raised profound questions about the ideas and institutions whose origins can be located in that founding moment are fit for purpose. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this concern by revealing the extreme inequalities within societies and across regions, and also the failings of international cooperation. We draw on scholars who have come together in 2020 and 2021 as part of the Lloyd George Study Group on World Order to consider a series of alternative future arrangements for international and regional governance from reforming the United Nations, Reviving the West, extending the Liberal Order, contending with an Illiberal Order, and managing a world order where China is the dominant power. Scholars on this panel also propose arrangements for a new Concert of Great Powers with limited participation from regional organizations. We evaluate the role of power, democracy, liberalism, nationalism and inequality in alternative futures for world order.
  
  Sponsor: Conference/Management
  
  Chair: Leslie Vinjamuri (Chatham House/SOAS)
  
  Participants: Charlie Kupchan (Council on Foreign Relations/Georgetown) , Alex Cooley (Columbia) , Daniel Nexon (Georgetown) , Leslie Vinjamuri (Chatham House/SOAS) , Peter Trubowitz (LSE) , Jennifer Welsh (McGuill University) , Rana Mitter (University of Oxford) , John Ikenberry (Princeton)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  
  Conference event / Coffee and conversation networking session - War Studies WG Room 10
- 16:00 → 17:30
  
  Conference event / Meet & Greet with Palgrave Macmillan Commissioning Editors Room 9
  
  Speakers: Dr Anca Pusca (Palgrave Macmillan), Anne Birchley-Brun (Palgrave macmillan), Rebecca Roberts (Palgrave Macmillan)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / Theorising International Law, Norms and Practices Room 7
  
  Sponsor: International Law and Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: ILPG Working group
  
  Chair: James Gow (King's College London)
  - Meaningful human control: How non-deliberative practices make norms
    
    Literature on disarmament/arms control has long been interested in how norms, institutionalised in international law, shape state practices. But there is a growing interest in how practices shape norms, going beyond a positivist legal understanding of state practice. Understanding this process analytically is vital as legal regulation typically lags behind the development of emerging technologies used in novel weapons systems. The paper contributes to this debate by arguing that norms can emerge in practices that are non-deliberative or non-verbalised in nature. So far, norm contestation and practice theories recognise deliberative practices that actors verbalise in communicative forums as sources of norms, but this argument does not extend to practices of doing. But practices of developing, testing, and operating weapons systems with autonomous features shape what states consider as appropriate when it comes to using force in important ways. The paper illustrates this analytical contribution through demonstrating how ways of operating air defence systems with automated and autonomous features have over decades incrementally shaped an emerging, silent norm of what counts as meaningful human control. These operational understandings run counter to efforts of deliberatively shaping meaningful human control as a fundamental new norm to govern weapons systems with autonomous features.
    
    Author: Ingvild Bode (Centre for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark)
  - E.H. Carr’s Theory of Law: Exploring the Elements and Problems of International Law
    
    The overall understanding of E.H. Carr has held his thought to be simpler than his published works reveal. Carr’s thought and approach to international relations have been the subject of a number of works, with recent revisionist literature pointing at the generally limited understanding of his work and the ill-fitting nature of the traditional ‘realist’ label. This revisionist literature has remained limited due to the lack of engagement with Carr’s works beyond the Twenty Years’ Crisis, and therefore overlook the ideas which are expressed throughout them. Focusing on these ignored works, this paper offers a reinterpretation of Carr’s theory of international law. This is done through the analysis of International Relations Between the Two World Wars, Britain: A Study of Foreign Policy, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, Conditions of Peace, Nationalism and After, The New Society, German-Soviet Relations, and his History of Soviet Russia series. Through these, this paper explores the different elements of Carr’s thought on international law. Ultimately contending that this rarely tackled aspect of Carr’s theory of international relations is both clearly present in his works and of great relevance in today’s international world.
    
    Author: Carmen Chas (University of Kent)
  - The securitisation of international law to forestall critique
    
    In times of fear and unpredictability, we look for solutions. IR as a discipline and as a practice has always turned to international law to offer solutions. Indeed, much of the literature that links IR and international law views international as a source of hope and certainty, and as the moral beacon to save us from the violence and destruction of international politics. This paper argues that this Manichean depiction of the discipline and practice of international politics is not simply overstated, or an insignificant prejudice. It is an essential part of international legal theory’s construction of international law as a superior mode of social organisation to politics. This paper applies securitisation theory to international legal theory to demonstrate how its depiction of global politics is central to its own self-understanding. Securitisation theory argues that the construction of a threat makes social or intellectual commitments, and particular outcomes possible. It will show how international politics is constructed as a threat to, variously, peace, justice, order, fairness and to international law itself. This construction of international politics as a threat justifies the intellectual commitment to the idea that law is unique and distinct from politics, specifically in the belief that legal norms are distinct from social norms. We see this manifested in the Tinkerbell fear: the repeated warning that we should not look too closely at how international law works (i.e. why states comply); we should just be grateful that it does. This forestalling of critique is combined with a powerful assumption that law’s uniqueness makes is a superior mode of social organisation to politics. This is international legal theory’s founding myth: that international law is different from everything non-law and this explains its greater normativity.
    
    Author: Adriana Sinclair (University of East Anglia)
  - Constructing Compliance: Creating Legal Meaning in the 1949 Geneva Conventions
    
    What does compliance mean in international law and how is this meaning constructed? At its core, international law represents standards that states are expected to comply with in their words and deeds, shaping how international relations are constituted and carried out. But how do actors decide what behaviors or words comply with international law and which ones are forbidden? Drawing on theories of rhetoric and compliance in international law, this paper argues that compliance is often a spectrum where many behaviors may be arguably compliant at any given time, but that the scope of this spectrum is open to construction and contestation by states and other actors. In particular, when drafting a treaty, actors have a unique opportunity to construct the meaning of compliance. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative text analysis approaches, this paper analyzes how actors constructed – through repeated social interactions and argumentation – the scope, or meaning, of compliance with the 1949 Geneva Conventions. In doing so, this paper illustrates how argumentation and social interaction is key to constructing and reconstructing the meaning of compliance in international law, challenging binary views of compliance and calling attention to the different scopes of compliance contained even within the same treaty.
    
    Author: Kyle Rapp (University of Southern California)
  - Audiences That Matter: Why States Publicly Admit to Breaking International Law
    
    Why do states sometimes publicly admit to breaking international law? Past cases of such “explicit breach” illustrate a phenomenon whereby a government can, under specific circumstances, benefit from openly admitting to breaking international law. We identify two sources of incentives for states when choosing to commit explicit breach: first, domestic audience benefits result from selectorates rewarding national politicians for standing up for their beliefs and serving the interests of the wider public at home, despite international legal obligations. Second, an explicit breach can appeal to international audiences and serve as a powerful tool to initiate change in the international law favourable to the breacher. These international audience benefits by dissatisfied states can therefore not only please the domestic audiences, but also result in desirable international legal change. However, states differ in their ability to benefit from the strategy of explicit breach. Only states in good international standing, defined as a combination of power and reputation, can gain such international audience benefits. Otherwise, the international audiences are more likely to punish the defiant state, reflecting badly on them, and hence making the strategy unattractive.
    
    Authors: Yuan Yi Zhu (University of Oxford) , Tuuli-Anna Huikuri (University of Oxford)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / Uses of expertise in redefining global, local and transnational orders Room 3
  
  Sponsor: International Relations as a Social Science Working Group
  
  Conveners: Quentin Deforge (EHESS (IFRIS)) , Alvina Hoffmann
  
  Chair: Jef Huysmans (Queen Mary, University of London)
  - Getting a seat at the government’s table: “Open government” expertise in Argentina and Tunisia
    
    “Open Government” is known to play a growing role in making governments more transparent by publishing data related for instance to statistics, public finance, or votes at the Assembly. Considering the circulation of knowledge and the new transnational social spaces built around it, “Open government” can be seen as a new transnational “issue area”. As we will show by focusing on the “Open Government Partnership”, a transnational mechanism launched in 2011, professionals and organizations from various fields (computing, human rights, public finance, etc.) are claiming expertise on this issue. Through a double case study of OGP reforms in Argentina and Tunisia, based on observations and interviews in both countries and during global OGP meetings, we will show that OGP actually consists in a new form of transnational governmentality that bypasses traditional mechanisms of representation to redefine it around three groups of “reformers”: researchers, government, civil society. Looking at the process of definition and evaluation of “OGP commitments” made at local and national levels, we will show that OGP is a new form of expertise that allows transnational “apolitical” elite groups to get a seat at the government’s table and to strongly engage in reforms.
    
    Author: Quentin Deforge (EHESS (IFRIS))
  - Torn between specialized and generalist diplomacy. Expertise Transfer in Oceans International Government
    
    Gradually institutionalized after 1982, the Law of the Sea (LOS) government is a sector of its own with local rules, institutions and symbolic hierarchies within the United Nations system. LOS expertise is mainly located in the legal field, in which legal professionals (judges, lawyers, academics) build their symbolic status upon the UN LOS Convention. This creates contradictory situations in the UNGA LOS informal consultations: diplomats, whose majority come from generalist profiles, seem torn between symbolic recognition towards their specialized colleagues and loyalty to the generalist profile of their profession. How does LOS legal expertise hang together in this context? Drawing upon ethnographic research inside (2011-2015) and outside (2016) the UNGA, I unveil two types of “expertise transfer” that contributes to reproduce in-action the authority of “LOS science”. The first is located in the everyday practices of diplomats at the UN. The second is located in informal LOS summer schools where highly recognized law professionals (ITLOS judges, US academics) come together to teach LOS to neophyte public servants. The frontier between Law and International Politics are in constant tension.
    
    Author: Natalia Frozel-Barros (Université Paris (Panthéon-Sorbonne))
  - Speaking like an expert: UN special rapporteurs as spokespersons of the universal
    
    How does someone become mandated to speak as an expert on behalf of ‘the universal’? This paper  examines the position of the  UN special rapporteur,  described as “the eyes and ears” of the UN international human rights architecture. I will  analyse the relationship between this independent expert, the Secretary-General and states in order to locate special rapporteurs in a broader field of struggle to speak ‘independently’.  Through this international political sociology of UN special rapporteurs, I contribute to  debates on international authority and expertise by offering a relational account of how experts become authorised to speak on  ‘the universal’, such as  human rights issues. Specifically, I explore the UN special rapporteurs as a new type of international civil servant, unlike diplomats or official representatives of international organisations  in permanent positions, who are entrusted with similar privileges and immunities  in their temporary positions. This paper uses 15 in-depth biographical interviews with current and former special rapporteurs and a biographical analysis of over 120 current and former mandate holders since the inception of the system in 1978 to theorise their day-to-day practices and strategies of embodiment of various voices, gaining access to difficult sites and constructing legal knowledge.
    
    Author: Alvina Hoffmann
  - Expert authority and state power: integrating technocratic routines with diplomatic processes at International Organizations
    
    Existing research emphasizes that expertise bolsters international organizations (IOs) with authority and legitimacy. Within an IO, however, any authority granted to experts also means a potential loss of authority and control by states. This results in a situation whereby states attempt to regulate the production of expertise without openly intervening into established modalities of science and “objectivity.” How is expert authority at the same time tamed and preserved? This paper takes a practice-theoretical approach and argues that, in such situations, expert authority and state power reside at two different levels of practice: whereas expert authority resides mostly in micro-routines such as data gathering and verification processes, state power is waged at the level of macro-processes, such as the architecture, sequencing and embedding of expert missions with regards to decision-making processes. In turn, expert routines can be selected from a pool of possible routines and assembled in manifold ways, resulting in the flexibility necessary to map them onto the realpolitik of the decision-making processes between states. The argument is developed through three case studies form the monitoring of UN sanctions in different political contexts. The study contributes to the understanding of IOs and the integration of expertise and diplomacy.
    
    Author: Aurel Niederberger
  - Social Enterprise Activism: Expertise and Entrepreneurship in International Development
    
    Social Enterprise Activism: Expertise and Entrepreneurship in International Development
    
    Author: Farai Chipato (University of Ottawa)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  
  Roundtable / Visuality and Emotions in International Politics Room 6
  
  [Note: The convenors proposed this topic as a panel which was accepted onto the 2020 programme. We are now resubmitting the topic as a roundtable with two further contributions.]
  
  The proposed roundtable takes up the recent “visual turn” in research on emotions in international politics. Empirically, it brings together research on different fields of world politics, including conflict, migration, humanitarianism and everyday political performativity. At the same time, the roundtable combines interdisciplinary research on different media of expression, including film, graffiti and fashion. Conceptually, we aim at disentangling the experience and expression of emotions from the social and political processes through which they are shaped, shared, and transformed. The various contributions challenge discourses of “authenticity” of emotions by highlighting their performativity. They combine a focus on narrative techniques, materiality and gender in order to add nuance to the study of the relationship between images and emotions.
  
  Sponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group
  
  Chair: Naomi Head
  
  Participants: Katja Freistein (Centre for Global Cooperation research, University of Duisburg-Essen) , Simon Koschut (Freie Universität, Berlin) , Amya Agarwal (Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen) , Christine Unrau (Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen) , Christine Andra (Dresden TU)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  
  Roundtable / Within / Without: Strategies and possibilities for cultivating knowledge with the Global East Room 5
  
  Recognising the ways in which knowledge production is shaped by colonial, racial, geopolitical, and cultural hierarchies is a critical point of departure to engage with International Relations (IR) and trespass its boundaries simultaneously. This is even more important when approaching traditionally 'over-reserached communities and societies'. However, the study of these societies, often undertaken by scholars from Global North institutions, has shed further light on the existing power imbalances in knowledge production and the violence that is reproduced in the process. In fact, the same could apply to scholars from the societies in question, who are based at Global North institutions.
  
  In that context, this roundtable will reflect on different ways of unlearning knowledge extraction: facing global hierarchies, recognising non-dominant knowledges and practices, and acknowledging the intellectual authorship of those whose livelihoods we study. A group of scholars working on/with the Global East from within Global North institutions will discuss the broad question: what role, strategies, and possibilities to engage in decolonial knowledge production and knowledge cultivation can we pursue while acting from without the spaces that provide the impetus for our work? In engaging with this question, we explore different strategies in practising decoloniality and resisting power relations (re)produced by colonial and imperialist settlements. In so doing, we highlight the importance of taking into account not only the different social positionings of those whose lived experiences we examine, but also our own positionings, as subjects actively involved in the process of knowledge production. Hence, this roundtable brings decolonial approaches into a methodological, political, and reflexive discussion of IR.
  
  Sponsor: South East Europe Working Group
  
  Chair: Elena Stavrevska (London School of Economics and Political Science)
  
  Participants: Katarina Kusic (Aberystwyth University) , Katarzyna Kaczmarska (University of Edinburgh) , Michiel Piersma (University of Liverpool) , Elena Stavrevska (London School of Economics and Political Science)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  
  Roundtable / Book roundtable: 'Global Justice and Social Conflict: The Foundations of Liberal Order and International Law' by Tarik Kochi (co–sponsored by the International Law and Politics and Ethics & World Politics working groups) Room 7
  
  This roundtable brings together a group of experts to discuss the book Global Justice and Social Conflict by Tarik Kochi.
  
  Across the 20th and 21st centuries, liberalism, and increasingly neoliberalism, have dominated the construction and shape of the global political order, the global economy and international law. For some, this development has been directed by a vision of ‘global justice’. Yet, for many, the world has been marked by a history and continued experience of injustice, inequality, indignity, insecurity, poverty and war – a reality in which attempts to realise an idea of justice cannot be detached from acts of violence and widespread social conflict. In this book Tarik Kochi argues that to think seriously about global justice we need to understand how both liberalism and neoliberalism have pushed aside rival ideas of social and economic justice in the name of private property, individualistic rights, state security and capitalist ‘free’ markets. Ranging from ancient concepts of natural law and republican constitutionalism, to early modern ideas of natural rights and political economy, and to contemporary discourses of human rights, humanitarian war and global constitutionalism, Kochi shows how the key foundational elements of a now globalised political, economic and juridical tradition are constituted and continually beset by struggles over what counts as justice and over how to realise it.
  
  Sponsor: Ethics and World Politics Working Group
  
  Chair: David J. Karp (University of Sussex)
  
  Participants: Anthony Lang, Jr (University of St Andrews) , Tarik Kochi (University of Sussex) , Maia Pal (Oxford Brookes University) , Andrea Birdsall (University of Edinburgh) , Lara Montesinos Coleman (University of Sussex)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Panel / Changing patterns of representation and digitalization in European diplomatic practices Room 6
  
  Sponsor: Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Conveners: Niklas Bremberg (Stockholm University) , Federica Bicchi (LSE)
  
  Chair: Niklas Bremberg (Stockholm University)
  
  Discussant: Jérémie Cornut (Simon Fraser University)
  - Adapting to crises and change: EU representation at the OSCE in an eventful 2020
    
    2020 was a year of crisis and change for the European Union’s and its member states’ representation at the OSCE. With an organizational leadership crisis and the effects of the Covid pandemic on organisational business, the functioning of the international organisation itself was heavily impacted, all while the EU’s representation was altered with the formal effects of Brexit coming into force. This paper studies how the representation of the EU and that of the member states have adapted to this set of extensive changes affecting their posting. As an international organisation setting where the EU’s diplomatic coordination and burden sharing practice is particularly developed, an analysis of changes to representation can provide broader insights into EU diplomatic adaptation. The analysis in this paper is based, amongst others, on research interviews with EU and member state diplomats posted at the organisation. The temporal scope of the analysis ranges from the UK’s formal withdrawal from the EU to the nomination of the EEAS Secretary General Helga Schmid as the OSCE’s Secretary General at its annual Ministerial Council in December.
    
    Author: Daniel Schade (Cornell University)
  - Tracking the demise of multilateralism? The evolution of the COREU network and communications in the EU foreign policy system
    
    This paper will analyse the evolving practice of EU diplomatic communication via the COREU network, to show how it mirrors challenges to multilateralism in EU foreign policy. Created already in the 1970s as a way to pursue multilateral communications in-between EPC/CFSP meetings, the COREU network became crucial during negotiations for the 2004 enlargement. It experienced a dramatic decline in traffic since then, but the decline has not led to the system’s demise. Rather, the COREU system has evolved into a more targeted bureaucratic practice, with the EEAS using it predominantly to negotiate low-key declarations (via the silent assent procedure) or to spread low-key information. Plans for reform and increased security have been drafted for over two decades, but are not close to to come to fruition, as diplomats use instead more flexible forms of communications that are both more user-friendly and less inclusive than the original COREU system.
    
    Authors: Federica Bicchi (LSE) , Marianna Lovato (UCD)*
  - EU Diplomacy in the Washington Twittersphere: Multilateralism on Social Media?
    
    European Union (EU) external representation in third countries is performed by both the member states and by the EU delegations. This hybrid system of representation is enacted through both formal and informal practices of combining bilateral relations with multilateral cooperation. As social media are inceasingly important channels of state representation, these practices also take place online. This paper explores how the member state embassies and the EU delegation perform EU representation on social media in their practices of digital diplomacy. It investigates the practices of coordination and maps emerging routines of EU multilateralism on social media. The United States’s capital provides a context of both strong bilateral relations and of member state interests in defending multilateral cooperation in light of anti-EU sentiments during the Trump administration. The study draws on observations in the Washington Twittersphere during major political events of relevance to the transatlantic relationship between 2019 and 2021. The study will contribute to advance our understanding of the role of digital diplomacy in contemporary practices of multilateral representation and in the coordination of EU foreign policy beyond Brussels.
    
    Author: Elsa Hedling (Lund University)
  - Digital Diplomacy in the time of pandemic: The case of the European Union
    
    The outbreak of Covid-19 constituted a major challenge for the European Union (EU) as its capacity to manage the pandemic and to coordinate member states’ responses to the crisis was severely put to the test. This paper seeks to analyze the EU’s use of social media during the outbreak. Specifically, the paper will examine which issues the EU addressed online and how these issues changed as the pandemic spread across the continent. Using thematic analysis, all tweets published by the EEAS and the President of the EU commission between March and August of 2019 will be analyzed so as to identify the issues addressed by the EU throughout different pandemic stages (e.g., spread of Covid19 to Spain and Italy, Germany, UK and Eastern Europe). In a second stage, social network analysis will be applied to map the clusters of member states’ responses to the EU digital campaign (e.g., supportive, critical, passive). In so doing, the study will provide a comprehensive account of the EU digital crisis management during the pandemic and discuss a set of conditions by which digital collaboration between the European Commission and the member states can be improved in times of crisis.
    
    Authors: Corneliu Bjola (Oxford University) , Ilan Manor (Tel Aviv University)*
  - The Prospects and Limits of Digital Diplomacy: The Case of Indonesia in 2020
    
    Traditional practices of diplomacy always underline the importance of face-to-face meetings. Diplomats and state’s officials are familiar with personal communication, whether it is formal or informal, in diplomatic practices. However, the rise of globalisation has raised the importance of information and communication technologies, and has coined the term digital diplomacy. Everyone has connected through information communication technologies nowadays, such as with social media, including diplomats and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFAs). This phenomenon has spurred expectations of diplomacy’s inclusiveness, the idea of digital diplomatic practices and also two-ways communication in diplomacy. In 2020, digital diplomacy seems to be more important than ever before, especially when it seems to emerge as the best possible solution to deal with the challenges pose by the covid-19 pandemic. The questions are: does the impression is true in reality? Does digital diplomacy really equip diplomats to solve a sudden shock that is happened internationally? And what can we learn from the conduct of digital diplomacy in 2020? Using the case study of Indonesia’s digital diplomacy in 2020 and based on the understanding of digital diplomacy offered by Bjola and Holmes, this paper argues that digital diplomacy has its prospects to be used as a strategy to face global challenges but it also has limits that may hinder the use of digital diplomacy in the future. The findings of this paper suggest that Indonesian MOFA and Missions in Germany has implemented digital diplomacy during the pandemic and they focus more on citizen protection issues. Besides that, Indonesian MOFA and Missions in Germany also conduct digital diplomacy to support Indonesia’s economic diplomacy, national and sovereignty diplomacy, Indonesia’s role in international forum as well as support to international solidarity. Nonetheless, the conduct of digital diplomacy is not yet seen as a strategy and influenced mainly by the initiative from diplomats. This paper is a qualitative study and focuses on the digital activity of the Indonesian MOFA and the Indonesia Missions in Germany in conducting diplomacy in 2020, especially as a respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper will be supported with primary data which is based on interviews with Indonesian MOFA representative and key diplomats from Indonesia Missions in Germany. Moreover, secondary data is taken from journals, articles, and news about Indonesia’s digital diplomacy activities.
    
    Author: Albert Triwibowo (Universität Rostock & Parahyangan Catholic University)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Panel / Mapping the Future of the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine Room 2
  
  Sponsor: Intervention and Responsibility to Protect Working Group
  
  Convener: IR2P Working group
  
  Chair: Pinar Gozen Ercan (Hacettepe University)
  - Neoconstructivism and Quantifying Norms of Protection
    
    This article outlines a neoconstructivist approach for understanding states’ intervention choices. Constructivism—a dominant international relations framework primarily associated with qualitative small-n analysis—stresses that states define “appropriate” behaviour in accordance to identities shaped by orientation toward international norms. A neoconstructivist approach maps quantitative methods to tenets of constructivism and emphasizes that empirical indicators can reveal a state’s normative orientation. We construct a typology of state actors in the human protection domain through a k-means clustering algorithm—deriving groups of “principled”, “performer”, and “pragmatist” states. The empirical analysis demonstrates the utility of a neoconstructivist framework, as the behaviour of states between clusters can be highly divergent. In accommodating methods as disparate as regression and synthetic control, a typological approach to analysing state action can be broadly applied.
    
    Authors: Noele Crossley (University College London) , Christina Qiu (Yale)
  - To Whom is the Sovereign Responsible? Responsible Sovereignty, R2P, and the Exclusions of Liberal Order
    
    This paper challenges the assumption that the "Responsible Sovereignty" of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a democratic or cosmopolitan transformation of international sovereignty. Relying on the young Marx's critique of liberal rights discourse, I show how this "Responsible Sovereignty" similarly obscures it's anti-democratic implications by shifting the discursive terrain and attempting to resolve a structural cosmopolitan issue. I then build on Garret Brown and Alexander Bohm's critique of R2P in light of this Marxist critique in order to think against the cosmopolitan defense of responsible sovereignty offered by Jean Cohen. I hope to show how the normative discourse surrounding "responsible sovereignty" needs to push "responsibility" in ways that demand states bear responsibility for the consequences of their actions abroad, rather than merely invoke "responsibility" to blame states for problems within their borders.
    
    Author: Thomas (Hank) Owings (University of Pennsylvania)
  - THE INTERNATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT IN A POST-LIBERAL ORDER
    
    This paper considers the implications of a post-liberal order for the international responsibility to protect. It focuses on two questions. First, what challenges will the international responsibility to protect face in a post-liberal order? Second, in light of these challenges, how would the requirements of the international responsibility to protect differ in the post-liberal order? In response to the first question, it argues that, in a post-liberal order the international responsibility to protect is likely to be less influential, as its ability to constrain and influence states and other actors decreases. In response to the second question, it argues that the requirements of the international responsibility to protect would be affected in several ways, including necessitating greater consideration of questions of prioritisation and requiring a re-evaluation, and potential abandonment, of the ‘narrow but deep approach’ to the responsibility to protect.
    
    Author: James Pattison
  - Localising the Responsibility to Protect in Civil Society: Paving the Road to Norm Degeneration?
    
    The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is the relevant framework for state responses to mass atrocities, which are ongoing in Syria. This article examines how that framework has been localised by civil society and the effects of that localisation. Using an empirical case study of the UK’s responses to Syrian refugees during 2014-16, the research demonstrates how state practice of a norm can affect civil society advocacy, which may have a deleterious effect on a norm’s life cycle. The research also revealed that civil society is resisting a link between R2P and refugee protection in practice despite states’ international commitments to both and despite how both overlap in some cases. Two conclusions are reached. First, the research found a complex, iterative relationship between states and civil society. How the UK has understood and practiced R2P has directly affected how civil society contests and modifies R2P in response despite the norm’s relevance to the Syrian case. Rather than using advocacy and engagement with states to reconceptualise the norm to fit its broader remit, some civil society actors have rejected or modified the norm instead. This has effectively helped entrap R2P within its narrow understanding and has made it politically expedient to show support for the norm’s aspirations implicitly rather than explicitly in the organisational discourse. Second, based on the results of this interdependent relationship, the political resistance against R2P is further entrenched, even when based upon the state’s narrow understandings, which serves to marginalise the norm.
    
    Author: Chloë M. Gilgan (Lecturer in Law, BISA Member, IR2P Working Group (soon to be Co-convener))
  - A complicated relationship: socioeconomics and mass atrocities in the 21st century
    
    In recent years, cosmopolitan theorists and genocide scholars have challenged the Responsibility to Protect on two fronts. First, they argue that mass atrocity prevention embodied in agreements such as the RtoP is, at best, destined to fail, or at worst, harmful, because it upholds and reproduces underlying structures and on-going practices which enable mass atrocities to occur in the first place. A key part of this argument is that socioeconomic factors are often viewed as a key cause or facilitator of mass atrocities. Second, because they view socioeconomics as a key facilitator of mass atrocity crimes, they put forward a normative argument that global socioeconomic structures need to be substantively changed in order to prevent mass atrocities from occurring. But should academics and policymakers buy into these normative recommendations? To answer this, the article analyses the relationship between mass atrocities and socioeconomics by analysing Human Development Index data (1990-2020) in order to shed light on the relationship between mass atrocities and socioeconomics in the 21st century.
    
    Author: Adrian Gallagher (University of Leeds, European Centre for RtoP)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Panel / Non-traditional instruments of Russian foreign policy: media, social media and strategic humour Room 4
  
  Sponsor: Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group
  
  Conveners: Dmitry Chernobrov (University of Sheffield) , Lucy Birge (University of Manchester) , Elizaveta Kuznetsova (Harvard University)
  
  Chair: Precious Chatterje-Doody (Open University)
  - Blame it on the algorithm? Russian influence on social media
    
    This paper sheds new light on Russian social media operations and their impact on the international political and media environment. By analyzing the social media strategy of the Kremlin’s international news broadcaster RT, I identify a variety of features that the channel uses to promote its content online. I argue that apart from the widely discussed trolls and bots techniques, the strategy of RT entails a skillful manipulation of algorithms used by Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. In particular, I show how RT constructs an attractive SEO (Search Engine Optimization) through the use of keywords, titles, topic organization, website architecture and the content of messages. Thus, the paper argues that a big part of Russian influence online is, in fact, a result of RT and its employees’ efforts to increase the so-called “organic traffic” through social media platforms. In order to understand this, I have employed a systematic frame and counter-frame analysis model. The paper thus shows how RT makes some of its content go viral on social media. My findings challenge the existing literature on Russian online media abroad that primarily focuses on artificial dissemination of content. The paper thus points to the problem of normative chambers in the so-called ‘post-truth’ age. It draws attention to the need of conceptualizing the role of social media in international politics proposing to theoretically approach it as a sphere of international two-way communication where interpretations and narratives are reinforced and amplified by citizens actively participating, enhancing, and disseminating these discourses.
    
    Author: Elizaveta Kuznetsova (Harvard University)
  - Russian memory diplomacy
    
    Russia's overt (ab)use of history to provoke conflict and division in the post-Soviet space has been well documented. However, less attention has been paid to how Russia uses history beyond this region. This paper examines how Russian state actors and affiliated media have conducted 'memory diplomacy' in the UK, Germany, and Serbia. Relying on mixed-methods content analysis of the Sputnik news agency, Rossotrudnichestvo cultural centres, and Russian Embassy Twitter and Facebook accounts, this paper analyses the ways in which Russia applies memory diplomacy abroad, including through the use of memory exports, and the creation of memory alliances with foreign audiences by supporting and amplifying supposedly 'marginalised' views of history. For example, in Serbia, Russian state actors and affiliated media dedicate considerable resources to promoting revisionist narratives of the 1990s Yugoslav wars. Drawing on examples gathered from research into Russian memory diplomacy in three countries, this paper will contribute original findings on the use of history within international relations and influence operations.
    
    Author: JADE MCGLYNN (University of Oxford/Henry Jackson Society)
  - Strategic humour: Public diplomacy and comic framing of foreign policy issues
    
    This paper explores persuasive applications of humour in public diplomacy. I propose a new concept of strategic humour – the use of humour by state and proxy actors to promote instrumental interpretations of contested international events to foreign and domestic publics. Through humour, states frame events in ways that advance their interests, deflect external criticism, and challenge narratives of other actors. In an entertaining form, strategic humour delivers a serious message that is simple, accessible, memorable, suited to the new media ecologies, and competitive in capturing news media and public attention. I focus on Russia as a state recently involved in a range of major controversies and demonstrate its use of strategic humour in three case studies. I argue that strategic humour is a fast-emerging, multi-format tool in public diplomacy, facilitated by the rise of social media and post-truth politics and less dependent on state’s broader power resources.
    
    Author: Dmitry Chernobrov (University of Sheffield)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Panel / Perspectives on intervention Room 3
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: PKPBG Working group
  
  Chair: PKPBG Working group
  - Reimagining Conflict through Nonviolent (Self-) Protection
    
    One of the foundational assumptions to many interventions in armed peacekeeping (and indeed IR more broadly) is that, if necessary, violence ultimately works even though it may be undesirable. Unarmed civilian protection (UCP) fundamentally challenges that notion by rejecting the use and threat of physical violence in its entirety. This nonviolent approach to civilian protection, using methods such as proactive engagement and capacity development, is effective through trust and relationship building with communities in conflict-affected areas. There is a growing body of literature highlighting that as a result, UCP practitioners gain more knowledge about conflict situations and can therefore provide more comprehensive protection. Yet, what it fails to consider is the impact of nonviolence on the process of local conflict knowledge production. The linear linkage of nonviolence to relationships and relationships to knowledge is now well documented, but this conception of UCP methods often treats knowledge as an objective, knowable truth with actors seeking to discover it. To fully understand the epistemic impact of nonviolence on conflict-related knowledge, we must firstly understand how those that ‘do’ nonviolence make meaning of the conflicts they live and work within. This paper explores whether in addition to the tangible benefits of nonviolent conflict intervention (more access, trust), nonviolence could be an epistemic practice. If nonviolence impacts the way armed conflict and violence is understood and known, then it could too expand our imaginations for protection and peace.
    
    Author: Louise Ridden (Aberystwyth University )
  - The global rise of stabilization? Norm diffusion and agency in stabilization policies
    
    Stabilization is a concept employed to designate policies that use civilian and military tools with the aim to create ‘a safe and secure environment, establishing the rule of law and promoting the conditions for social well-being’ (Muggah 2013). The disillusionment regarding ambitious liberal peacebuilding interventions of the late 1990s and early 2000s and the emergence of new security concerns have led NATO countries and the UN to increasingly embrace stabilization. However, although the literature has focused on international stabilization operations, stabilization has also been employed by actors in the Global South to address political and criminal violence. This paper looks at the extent to which stabilization has been appropriated and readapted by countries and regional organizations in the Global South. Providing evidence from Africa (where the African Union has led stabilization operations) and Latino America (where several governments have launched stabilization policies), it argues that actors from the Global South have not only adopted Western understandings of stabilization but they have also contributed to the development of stabilization doctrines. It also assesses whether the claim that stabilization is increasing securitization and marginalizing peacebuilding holds in the context of interventions led by actors in the Global South.
    
    Author: Giulia Piccolino (Loughborough University)
  - UN peace operations and (re)building the rule of law
    
    Peace operations undertake a broad array of rule of law activities aiming to rebuild the justice system and end impunity. This paper first discusses the UN’s understanding of the rule of law and why the UN has chosen to underpin the peacebuilding agenda with ending impunity. Second, transitional justice in MINUSCA is discussed including the establishment of the Special Criminal Court. Third, UNMISS is investigated where the UN has an unprecedented challenge of ensuring the rule of law on protection of civilian sites. Lastly, the promise of local justice is assessed. It is suggested that while ending impunity and strengthening formal institutions can be important to ensure human rights violations do not persist, there needs to be an overarching, bottom-up strategy in place to allow local communities, and other civil actors, to be part of the rule of law process.
    
    Author: Alexander Gilder (Royal Holloway, University of London)
  - Building Peace after Self-determination: Faulty Assumptions and Their Consequences
    
    Resolving self-determination conflicts through self-determination and partition has been controversial. One strand of the literature optimistically claims that creating a new state based on a common identity strengthens the prospect of peace and democracy while the other strand of the literature is more pessimistic, arguing that there is no such guarantee.
    This literature, however, has been disconnected from another relevant subfield: international peacebuilding. Considering that the two most recent cases of de jure partition—East Timor and South Sudan—were accompanied by significant international peacebuilding efforts, the international dimension should not be disregarded. This paper aims at understanding these two cases, not yet studied in the partition literature, through examining both local and international dynamics. Specifically, it analyzes why, despite significant international involvement, both cases experienced troubles, albeit in a different degree: the 2006 Crisis and the 2013 Civil War respectively.
    In line with the theories of pessimists, I show that homogenous support for independence in these two cases did not indicate the lack of internal divisions. However, observing the unity of pro-independence groups up to the referendum, international actors wrongly adopted the logic of optimists. As a result, they assumed that the unity would continue after independence, that the unity indicated that no tensions existed within the pro-independence groups, and that the unity meant democratization would not be difficult. Failing to understand the local dynamics, they were not well placed to prevent the 2006 Crisis and the 2013 Civil War.
    
    Author: Kentaro Fujikawa (London School of Economics and Political Science)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  
  Roundtable / Review of International Studies Roundtable II: Racialised Violence in Global Politics Room 1
  
  Racialised Violence in Global Politics
  
  Sponsor: Conference/Management
  
  Chair: Martin Coward (University of Manchester)
  
  Participants: Benjamin Meiches (University of Washington) , Shiera Malik (DePaul University) , Andreja Zevnik (University of Manchester) , Lester Spence (John Hopkins University) , Kim Wagner (Queen Mary University of London) , Melody Fonseca Santos (University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus) , Marta Fernández (IRI/PUC-Rio)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Panel / The Other Histories of International Relations: women thinkers, forgotten locations and unexplored genres Room 8
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: Joanna Wood (University of Oxford)
  
  Chair: Alireza Shams-Lahijani (LSE)
  
  Discussant: Harry Mace (University of Cambridge)
  - Towards a South Asian Feminist Conception of International Thought
    
    My paper specifically asks the question: how can we theorise the political participation and activism of third-world women within historical anti-imperial international networks? In part one of this paper, I begin with an appraisal of critical IR historiographies. Firstly, I demonstrate how both conventional western historical thought and some critical historiographies of IR are constructed as universal, whilst drawing on provincial, western thought. This section draws out the analytical biases of epistemological Eurocentrism. In part two, I analyse scholarship on non-western thought as a response to this bias, but point to three limitations of such readings. In part three, I consider ‘anti-imperial’ as an alternative analytical and political framework, which is transdisciplinary, historically situated, and attentive to multiaxial struggles. In part four, I analyse the disavowals of women’s international thought in IR and beyond, and posit my feminist and anti-imperial theoretical framework, making the claim that South Asian feminist thought is international thought. Using a plethora of cross-archival sources of Indian women’s political participation in the early to mid-twentieth century, I claim that historical Indian women’s ‘imperial experiences’ was both a lived reality and a pivotal space for (re)thinking competing visions of the ‘international’. In the concluding section, I bring the discussion back to rethinking international thought and reiterate my theoretical commitments to blur the theory/practice divide when reading international thought and discuss how examining women’s international thought can open up possibilities to rethink conceptual tools of international, intellectual, and feminist thought.
    
    Author: Shruti Balaji (LSE)
  - Situating Muna Lee’s Mid-Century International Relations Theorizing
    
    Amid recent calls to rethink the canon of International Relations theory to include marginalized voices, there are important questions about who should be included, how, and for what purpose. I engage these questions through an exploration of the work of Muna Lee (1895 - 1965). Lee had a genre-bending intellect, which she applied as a poet, writer, activist, administrator at the University of Puerto Rico, and official in the U.S. State Department. Her immense intellectual production included a book of poetry, five mystery novels, a children’s book, several translations, and countless book reviews and essays. This production culminated in her 1947 book with Ruth Emily McMurry The Cultural Approach: Another Way in International Relations, which advocated for mutual understanding between nations through cultural sharing. The book made few inroads into the discipline of International Relations – predictably, Hans Morgenthau found the case for cultural understanding to bear “no relation to the actualities of international politics” – and it had little impact on subsequent scholarship. The neglect of Muna Lee as a thinker of international relations would then seem to present an easy remedy: belated incorporation into the canon of great works. Yet, I argue for resisting a romanticized interpretation of both Muna Lee’s work and of the canon itself. Muna Lee was a complicated figure; her place in relation to the U.S. colonial state, for example, and her concept of culture both warrant rigorous scrutiny. I conclude, however, that it is important to recognize her “other way” as a way not taken in the study and practice of international relations.
    
    Author: Darrah McCracken (University of Washington - Tacoma )
  - A forgotten scholar? Miriam Camps and informal transatlantic diplomacy
    
    Miriam Camps, a US economist and scholar, had a short but successful career in the State Department in the 1940s and early 1950s. As one of only a few female officers, she was part of a small group of economists who entered the State Department in the 1940s to work on the new challenges facing US diplomacy during and after the Second World War, particularly European reconstruction. When Camps left the State Department in 1954 following her marriage to a British national, she embarked on an alternative diplomatic career which saw her establishing herself as a well-known scholar on European integration and transatlantic relations, affiliated with elite think tanks.
    First linked to Princeton University’s Centre of International Studies, in the early 1960s she became a senior fellow at two prestigious think tanks: the Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House. This role allowed her to foster close collaboration between both think tanks and to maintain her networks on both sides of the Atlantic – networks that she had established during her career at the State Department. This paper focuses on how Camps, who had to leave her civil servant career, carved out an alternative trajectory as an IR scholar and how she explored alternative diplomatic paths to influence the US and UK policy discourse on European integration and transatlantic relations. The paper also retraces how and why, in her commentary and scholarship, her focus shifted from European integration in the 1960s to global issues of international trade and reforming the Western international trading framework in the 1970s and 1980s.
    
    Author: Katja Seidel (University of Westminster)
  - Hidden History: the women who built the Bureau of International Research at Harvard
    
    In 1923, Fannie Fern Andrews, an American international educationalist and peace activist, formulated “a plan for establishing a foundation for instruction in international affairs at Radcliffe”. It claimed women were particularly committed to, equipped for and in need of the study of international relations. The funders disagreed: they told Radcliffe to hand over to Harvard. However, Andrew’s vision was taken up by Ada Comstock, President of Radcliffe and her Dean, International Law scholar Bernice Brown. Their work saw the Harvard-Radcliffe Bureau of International Research founded in 1924 and, despite co-option, both serving on the five-person committee with Brown as Secretary, a role she would hold for the two-decade life of the Bureau. From 1924-42, it fostered the careers of over two dozen women international thinkers, published volumes of their work, and gave rise to the first generation of women international relations scholars in the academy. Though not the same feminist project envisioned by Andrews, by 1942, through Comstock and Brown’s patronage, diplomacy and advocacy, it had built a world of women’s international thought in the academy and bequeathed a generation whose careers would shape the field and last until the 1980s. Exploring the role of Comstock and Brown highlights how important senior women educators and their institution-building were to women’s international thought in the academy. The paper argues that such work should be seen as knowledge production and a product of, as much as a response to, the deeply gendered academy. Above all, it deserves recognition for its contribution to IR.
    
    Author: Joanna Wood (University of Oxford)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Panel / What do we know about Conflict? Interrogating Representations of War and Security Room 5
  
  Sponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: PPWG Working group
  
  Chair: PPWG Working group
  - The Limits of Imagination: Securitisation and Exceptionalism in the World of Warcraft Video Game
    
    Securitisation theory has too often been associated with the liberal state of exception and its problematic bagage. The Copenhagen School’s early claims to deconstruct (not reproduce) the national security logic seem largely overlooked. Through the fantasy video game World of Warcraft, this paper asks how a distinct security mode is still possible when the normalisation of armed violence exceeds even what Carl Schmitt’s political theory can provide for. It redefines the mirror approach to popular culture for theory exploration, framing the game as a ‘third-order representation’ and analysing how its numerous factions discursively construct each other. Following a careful reading of Ole Wæver’s formulation of the ‘existential threat’, securitisation asserts that without a certain referent object, the world becomes meaningless. As a tool for reshaping the limits of imagination, securitisation enacts political communities in World of Warcraft by fostering supranational cooperation and erasing sovereign disputes, against conventional real-world wisdom. In later expansions of the game, the monopoly on legitimate securitisation is captured by the nascent sovereign state, imbuing securitisation with the realist connotations it is today known for. The paper furthermore illustrates the pivotal role of securitising discourse in popular culture narratives.
    
    Author: Vic Castro
  - "Decontestation of the Essentially Contestable”: Biopolitics, Ideology and Fantasy in Kurdish Conflict
    
    The Kurdish Conflict in Turkey has a deep and violent history consisting of cycle upon cycle of conflict. The current armed conflict between Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK) and Turkish Republic has been ongoing since mid-1970s. On the one hand, the political, human and economic cost of war have been staggering with a price tag over $300 million, an increasing social/death toll, and the sheer number of displaced people, resulting in a deeply-divided and polarized society. On the other hand, despite the impact of the violence and the conflict on everyday life, the Republic of Turkey has systematically back-grounded the political dimension of the conflict and actively prevented the public/political contestation by maintaining a prevailing discourse: “There is no Kurdish Conflict”. As such the conflict – that had become a Gordian knot - has remained unresolved. The paper argues that understanding the nature, form and dynamics of this de-politisation strategy can cast a different light upon the resistance towards the peace and the resolution/transformation of this intractable political conflict and account for the resistance towards its resolution. The paper accordingly raises the following questions: How does non-recognition of the political character of the Kurdish Conflict work? What does this de-politisation/contestation exactly consist of? and How does the decontestation of the Kurdish Conflict become possible? By advancing a critical inquiry into the conditions of the de-politisation, the paper draws on the work of scholars such as Foucault (1980), Agamben (1998), Freeden (1996), Laclau and Mouffe (1985), Derrida (1970), Lacan (1977) and Glynos and Howarth (2007) and argues that the political dimension of the Kurdish Conflict has been kept at bay with a hegemonic assemblage of biopolitical practices and ideological/fantasmatic articulations.
    
    Author: Recep Onursal (University of Kent)
  - Forget Psychological War: Historical Amnesia and the Obligation to Know
    
    Since 2016, ‘psychological warfare’ has returned in dramatic fashion to Western political discourses. However, the history of psychological warfare is poorly understood. This paper argues that, not only are these discourses made possible through structured practices of historical amnesia, but that they have transformed certain forms of popular political knowledge into prerequisites for national security. This paper examines three periods of psychological warfare: its origins in the Second World War, its formalisation during the Cold War, and its contemporary ‘cyber’ revival. I show that in each period, the power of psychological warfare is said to be underwritten by secret and esoteric forms of knowledge capable of frictionless manipulation of populations across space. Correspondingly, I show that defense against psychological warfare is routinely framed in terms of personal knowledge. Discourses of psychological warfare have therefore produced what Foucault calls an “obligation to know” in which personalised forms of knowledge and ignorance are said to determine balances of national security and geopolitical power. I argue, however, that built into these exercises is an historical amnesia concerning the role of secrecy and deception in constructing and circulating these narratives. I conclude that the kinds of popular knowledge upon which security against psychological war is said to rest is highly uneven and contingent upon modes of ignorance and forgetting.
    
    Author: Jeffrey Whyte (University of Manchester)
  - Cultures of the Climate Crisis: Cli-fi and the possibilities of political futures
    
    The ongoing climate crisis represents one of the most pressing and challenging threats to global security. While much scholarship is – rightly – focused on the science of climatology, environmental security, and the policy of prevention and management there has been much less on how cultural media represent, create, and circulate particular meanings of the Anthropocene. This paper starts with the argument that popular culture generally, and Hollywood movies specifically, contribute to the creation and circulation of meanings regarding climate change and its possible solutions through the inducement of highly intensive, embodied, and affective encounters between screen and audience. The emerging sub-genre of cli-fi (climate-fiction) will be interrogated through movies such as The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Snowpiercer (2013), and Geostorm (2017) to ascertain what role popular culture plays within the creation and circulation of the meanings, causes, and solutions to climate change. It will be argued that these movies represent two possible outcomes to ongoing anthropogenic climate change – disaster or technological salvation – and by so doing, close off the potential to engage with the possibility of the radical social, political, and economic change that is necessary to halt the effects of a changing climate.
    
    Author: Cahir O'Doherty (University of Groningen)
Wednesday 23 June
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Africa's changing international relations: new justifications, new forms of intervention Room 1
  
  Sponsor: Africa and International Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: AISG Working group
  
  Chair: Timothy Shaw (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
  - Witness adventurers? Exploring tensions between témoignage and travel writing in the construction of aid worker identities in humanitarian memoirs in Africa
    
    In this paper, I outline a framework for for reading humanitarian memoir as embedded in both the tradition of ethical witnessing and of adventure travel writing. Many critiques of humanitarianism have focused problematic ethical justifications for it, labelling them the ‘white man’s burden’ and the ‘white saviour complex’. However, while memoirs by humanitarian aid workers do reveal these dynamics, it is only part of the story. As Roth (2013) has noted, aid work is also a form of ‘edge-work’, or voluntary risk taking, and, as such, it is useful to also consider humanitarianism memoir as a form of adventure travel writing. This double lens allows for a more nuanced understanding of how the humanitarian social imaginary is built and sustained in and through the writings of its participants. Drawing on a range of humanitarian memoirs, focused predominantly in African contexts, I explore how the concept of witnessing, or témoignage, is central to the construction of a humanitarian identity in these memoirs. However, building on analysis that has highlighted the gendered nature of an imagined ideal aid worker (Read 2018), I argue it is important to understand the broader influences on the construction of aid worker identity, particularly by highlighting the commonalities with adventure travel writing. Works by Mary Louise Pratt (1992) and Debbie Lisle (2006; 2016) have highlighted the importance of travel writing for tracing colonial continuities in contemporary global political relations and I argue that humanitarian memoir must also be read in this tradition, particularly in its depiction of the African continent. This double reading of humanitarian memoirs reveals a humanitarian social imaginary in which an ethical ‘witness’ identity is re-produced in ways that reflect and reinforce existing racial and gender binaries in the humanitarian sector and upholds a supposed altruism at its heart in ways which deflect critique. Using the adventure travel frame to challenge this representation allows for a more complex understanding of the competing personal, political, spatial and ethical factors that shape humanitarianism as field of practice, as well as offering a more nuanced picture of humanitarianism’s colonial legacies and its relationship to its spaces of operation.
    
    Author: Roisin Read (University of Manchester)
  - Hegemony, Common Sense, and Non-Western African Agency in Liberal Interventions
    
    Why are Western international actors carrying out liberal peace interventions – that prioritise the necessity of democracy, the rule of law and human rights – in post-conflict societies? The prevailing answer to this question in the mainstream critical scholarship on international intervention is that: it is because of their deliberate intention to perpetuate a new Western liberal imperialism for the ideological control of the global society. However, this ‘neo-imperialist intentionality framework’ could not provide a perspective for delving into the agency of non-Western actors in the liberal peace project that is recently spotted. This paper recasts African interveners as non-Western subjects of liberal intervention discourse by asking: why are postcolonial African actors activating their agency in liberal peace interventions? While drawing on interview data, text corpora and critical discourse analysis within the contexts of African liberal interventions in Somalia, South Sudan and The Gambia, this paper locates this agency within the new-Gramscian perspective of hegemony and common sense. More importantly, this paper opens up a conversation for elucidating a broader conundrum in IR intervention discourse on why some non-Western interveners are committing to the liberal project despite its growing characterisation as a Western neo-imperialist scheme.
    
    Author: Babatunde Obamamoye (Australian National University)
  - Is Ideology 'still' Relevant? The Utility of Ideology to Understanding Africa’s International Relations
    
    Ideology has received little relevance and attention from African-centred IR scholars. How did this happen; how can we bring ideology back into Africa’s IR conversations; why is this important? These questions are central themes around which this paper is built. Ideology has been downplayed due to the pejorative view of it that hinders its analytical utility. I argue that one way in which ideology can be brought back is by reconceptualising ideology in a way that draws a synergy between thought and action, and how such complementarity helps push ideology beyond the frontiers of just thinking to its influence on actual policymaking. I demonstrate this by drawing on practical examples from Ghana and other African countries to explore how ideology can complement our understanding and insights into three key debates on Africa’s international relations: extraversion, African agency, foreign policy continuity and change. My point in this paper is that ideology provides an alternative, but complementary, perspective to these debates. What this paper does is to set the tone to bring ideology up from the margins into mainstream African literature, and to provoke further analysis of African politics and understanding of state behaviour from such perspectives. Taking ideology seriously would position African-centred IR scholars in a better position to gain a broader and more in-depth awareness of the dynamics of Africa’s international relations.
    
    Author: Emmanuel Siaw (Royal Holloway University of London)
  - Zambian government policymaking space and its determinants in the changing global landscape
    
    The changing global landscape has provided sub-Saharan governments with new ways of conceptualising and financing their development agendas and influenced their relationships with Western aid donors. This paper will employ qualitative data gathered in early 2020 to examine how the Zambian state has sought to use the changing global landscape to deliver on its own political priorities. It will argue that while the government has increased policy space in relation to its overall development strategy, it has gained limited leverage in individual negotiations with Western donors.
    
    The Zambian development strategy has broadened as access to credit – both from financial markets and from non-Western states – has expanded fiscal and economic policy space. The changing global landscape has not, however, provided the government with the space to determine what Western donors fund or leverage in individual aid negotiations. Programmes brought by Western donors, whose number and budgets have decreased, meet with little resistance and negotiations remain at the margins of policy making. Thus while Western donors and the IFIs retain influence on the Zambian government’s policymaking spaces, it will be argued that the government has prioritised opening up policy spaces that are important domestically over maintaining aid flows and relationships with Western actors.
    
    Author: Nicola Heaton (University of Birmingham)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  
  Roundtable / Art and/of Military Afterlives (please feel free to bring needle and thread, drawing or painting materials) Room 2
  
  Theatre created by military spouses. | Drawings made undercover in international arms fairs. | Artwork produced with paper composed from shredded veterans’ uniforms.
  
  In this roundtable we bring interdisciplinary scholars and artists into conversation in order to explore the ways that art and military afterlives intersect and become entangled. We seek to give texture to the multiple, complex, and diverse ways that the afterlives of war and military participation at once manifest through, and are represented in, creative practice. We ask: what kinds of temporalities and affects do military afterlives occupy? And, what can art and creative practice offer our understanding of these affects and temporalities?
  
  This roundtable will foster a creative collaborative space for all those in attendance. Contributors will be invited to talk through their creative scholarship and forms of engagement with the roundtable themes, but also to demonstrate their creative practice in action. At the same time, those who are ‘attending’ the session will be encouraged to also take part and engage in this creativity. We will then come together and share what we have created at the end of the session, so that the roundtable itself enacts art and/of military afterlives.
  
  Sponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group
  
  Chair: Julia Welland (University of Warwick)
  
  Participants: Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox (Artist, University of Queensland) , Michael Mulvihill (University of Newcastle) , Berit Bliesemann de Guevara (Aberystwyth University) , Sarah Bulmer (University of Exeter) , Laura Mills , Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University) , Alice Cree (University of Newcastle)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Making Sense of International Politics Room 5
  
  Sponsor: Interpretivism in International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: IIRG Working group
  
  Chair: Hannes Hansen-Magnusson (Cardiff University)
  
  Discussant: Katarzyna Kaczmarska (University of Edinburgh)
  - Tracing Process Tracing in Securitisation*
    
    This paper* contributes to this year’s BISA Conference’s general theme of the possibilities and limitations of international studies by responding to a particular question: “to what extent is process tracing a useful approach in the Copenhagen School’s framework of analysing security?” The paper claims the following three points. First, the deliberate choice and articulation of the method employed is crucial in conducting international relations research, as illustrated in the study of (de)securitisation. Second, in keeping up with the persistent pursuit of engaging in cutting-edge international studies, process tracing offers an alternative method in securitisation although its potential is yet to be fully explored. (Interpretivist) Process tracing reinforces the empirical significance of the new framework of analysis as this method aims to explain securitisation through causal mechanisms in a manner that is consistent with the Copenhagen School’s commitment to a post-positivist meta-theory. Consequently, and third, as new techniques are further developed in applying IR theories, particular methods’ drawbacks, in this case, process tracing’s, have to be brought to the fore. Researchers then have to decide on the trade-off or on utilising a combination of methods. These arguments are assessed using empirical literature involving interpretivist process tracing in understanding (de)securitisation and this researcher’s on-going project on Philippine foreign policy response toward the South China Sea disputes.
    
    *included in the BISA 2020 Conference programme
    
    Author: Chester Yacub (University of Nottingham)
  - Using visual analysis to access practices
    
    An innovative avenue of inquiry brings practice theories into conversation with norm research in IR. The focus of this work is to understand how practices contribute to producing social change in the form of norms, defined as understandings of appropriateness. But practice scholars encounter methodological challenges stemming from the fact that practices are typically based on implicit/embodied knowledge that cannot be accessed solely via texts. Scholars therefore often conduct interviews or engage in participant observation. The paper contributes to this literature by arguing that visual analysis presents another useful way of studying practices. I argue that visuality makes practices visible or obscure, on display or hidden and thereby produces normative implications. The paper outlines a hands-on, interpretive approach to studying practices via visuals. It closes with an empirical sketch, analysing practices inherent to a visual depicting the BONUS system, so-called ‘smart’ munitions with autonomous features in targeting, as used by the Swedish delegation in a presentation to the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. The visual makes operating the system appear unproblematic and appropriate by limiting the imagination to an unrepresentative, empty conflict setting that is devoid of humans.
    
    Author: Ingvild Bode (Centre for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark)
  - Studying Problematizations: Introducing Carol Bacchi’s What´s the problem represented to be? approach to IR
    
    Critical approaches to IR have often been criticized for lacking methodological rigor. (Aradau & Huysmans 2014) Especially, authors informed by the works of Michel Foucault have faced challenges to justify their methodology, given that Foucault did not provide scholars with a blueprint of his methods. This paper argues that Carol Bacchi´s ´What´s the problem represented to be?´ (WPR) approach, provides a robust critical methodology for policy analysis. WPR is a method that facilitates the critical examination of public policies to analyze ‘how the “problem” is represented within them and to subject this problem representation to critical scrutiny’. (Bacchi, 2012) This way of questioning differs from other forms of policy analysis in that it ‘shifts the focus of analysis from policy as a “problem solving” exercise, a technical, neutral and responsive process, to a mode of thinking that sees policy as an act which is constructive of “problems”’ (Marshall 2012). Policies are therefore not analyzed from a problem-solving perspective, but from a problem-questioning perspective. By making the ‘problem’ itself the focus of analysis, it becomes possible to uncover the political, epistemological and historical contexts which are constitutive of the problem representation. I demonstrate the value of this approach by subjecting the Cure Violence (CV) NGO to a WPR analysis. CV argues that ‘violence is a disease’ that can be cured via epidemiological methods used in disease control. A WPR analysis of CV’s ‘violence as disease’ narrative shows how its medicalization of violence is tied to a neoliberal rationality of governing that disentangles violence from structural factors and explains violence solely by reference to individual pathology. In doing so, CV produces new identities based on assumptions concerning biological infection or immunity resistance, which, as its visual language shows, are grounded in race. Through a politics of exclusion, CV turns these ‘at risk’ identities into appropriate targets for health intervention, with the aim of encouraging these to act upon themselves to improve or restore their productive capacities in order to achieve the idealized form of healthy citizenship that CV propagates. The paper will conclude with recommendation for the application of WPR in IR.
    
    Author: Malte Riemann (Royal Military Academy Sandhurst)
  - Reconsidering Westphalia? Disbelief, Miscalculation and Power Shifts in an Age of Liberal Crisis
    
    This paper examines the causes and potential consequences of the current crisis of the Liberal International Order (LIO) through an English School conceptual framework developed by Buzan (2004). It first analyses the normative claims made by liberal scholars and policymakers within the Western core of that LIO on the beneficial workings of liberally defined primary institutions in International Society; in particular, it examines these institutions’ expected interactions and their intended effects. These normative claims are subsequently critically assessed through an empirical mapping of these primary institutions since the end of the Cold War, and their relative grounding in the binding forces of belief, calculation, and coercion. It is argued that much of the crisis of the Liberal World Order is based on a disjuncture between liberal normative claims and empirical realities: the internally contradictory workings of these institutions, their unexpected effects in the inter-human domain, and changing material conditions have led to a weakening of the binding forces of belief and calculation (especially within the Western core), while shifts in the global distribution of power have made the upholding of the liberal order based on coercion less feasible. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the relative likelihood and consequences of a matrix of four possible future scenarios based on the survival or disintegration of the Western liberal core, and the maintenance or rejection of the cosmopolitan, universalist normativity that has characterized its approach to international society to date.
    
    Author: Kevork Oskanian (University of Birmingham)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Migration and asylum management: Space and actors Room 3
  
  Sponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group
  
  Convener: FOTEINI KALANTZI (University of Oxford)
  
  Chair: FOTEINI KALANTZI (University of Oxford)
  - Analyzing Refugee Studies through a different lens in International Relations: A case study of European Response to the Afghan Refugee Crisis
    
    The proposed study is going to include the Afghan refugee question into a wider debate. Even after discussing each and every framework of a refugee crisis such as cultural and economic aspects, political borders and boundaries, national and international institutions, human rights factor and putting a gender lens, the crisis is unlikely to be solved in near future. The study is going to discuss what is missing in the current refugee debate and how other aspects of refugee studies can be included in international relations.
    Thousands of Afghans risk their lives daily by crossing borders in search of a better life. During 2015, millions of these people arrived in Europe. This study provides a critical overview of recent afghan migration flows and offers answers as to why people flee, what happens during their flight and investigates the various responses to mass migratory movements. The proposed study discusses on the reasons why migration should be examined critically.
    The afghan mobilization has been deteriorated by the failure of the international human rights instruments and migration frameworks. The securitization of migrations in the European Union (EU) with the current migratory crisis, through the adoption of exceptional measures that go beyond the sphere of normal politics and the adoption of what might be considered some legally questionable measures for the Afghans.
    Nevertheless, the adoption of these measures so far has not helped to solve the humanitarian crisis, rather proved the inability of the EU as an effective mechanism. These paper discuses how the securitization approach of the EU failed to adopt a coherent and comprehensive strategy regarding migration management.
    Since 2011, the Afghans constitute one of the most important refugee populations since the Soviet invention. The development of restrictive migration policies in the neighboring countries and a bleak future for the Afghanistan led the Afghans travel to a far-land. What becomes apparent through case studies such as these is that despite the brevity of human rights legislation – recognized across most of the developed world – states are now implementing pre-emptive measures that effectively neutralize their obligations.
    This study explains how the present international mechanism may undermine international protection for asylum claimants and refugees, and potentially contradict the object and purpose of Refugee Conventions.
    
    Author: Rajarshi Chakraborty (PhD)
  - Refugee Studies through a different lens: NGOs, Relative Surplus Population and Racial Capitalism
    
    The critical literature on NGOs operating on migration has often interrogated its implication in systems of humanitarian-industrial complex; state surveillance; neoliberal governmentality. We propose another view, informed by a political economy perspective, which reveals the implication in broader systems of racial capitalism and, particularly, the management of relative surplus populations. We illustrate this point by exploring the ambiguous role that NGOs, both grassroots and large, serve in supporting people in hotspots in Greece. We show how NGOs, consciously or unconsciously, participate in secondary exploitation of displaced people through voluntary roles. We discuss how different forms of existence of RSP are present in the sector, with racialised hierarchies between different groups of volunteers. We conclude by exploring the political dilemmas generated by this situation in regard to the practice of NGOs, resistance and the possibility of alternative forms of solidarity.
    
    Authors: Gemma Bird (University of Liverpool) , Davide Schmid*
  - Creating (in)security through space: humanitarian entanglements in hosting communities
    
    Located one kilometre from the purpose-built gates of Jordan’s largest refugee camp, Zaatari Village has adapted to become a hosting community, reactivating pre-war religious, familial and tribal networks that bridge the gap between local and migrant. The village, which has doubled in population since 2012, has been moulded, and spaces created, by the people interacting in its streets, shops, schools and community centres.
    
    Despite these changes, the village represents a forgotten space on the periphery of aid. This paper addresses the role of refugee governance in processes of social cohesion and refuge making through a spatial lens. Incorporating paradigms of grassroots and humanitarian governance draws out the entanglements between how space is made and used in policy, and how space is constituted through the lived experiences of displacement. Space, therefore, is not neutral, but reflects relationships and patterns which penetrate the physical landscape.
    
    This paper is based on data collected via online interviews and policy document analysis. It seeks to understand the social processes and communicative strategies between migrants, local populations and agents of governance to investigate how such iterations co-create, maintain or shape the space in the village, creating a site of refuge balanced between humanitarian imaginaries of community needs, and the realities of spatial management, as lived by inhabitants.
    
    By centralising the village as a space of refuge adapted to the context of conflict-induced displacement, this rural village is conceptualised as an ordinary space, living in an extraordinary context, where people live the textures of the most banal everyday experiences which build a life. The sociospatial complexities that take shape, therefore, begin to fracture the confines of ‘blueprint’ refugee governance.
    
    Author: Hannah Owens (Queen Mary University of London )
  - Struggles over Camps and Global Logics of Detention
    
    In response to widespread migration and displacement, detention regimes around the world attempt to capture and control the movement of ‘irregular’ migrants through detention and encampment. Detention camps are sites of violence and enforced isolation, but they are also sites of action, resistance and connection. In their struggles, people in detention draw on multiple and varied repertoires of resistance as well as innovative and performative acts of communication, that challenge entrenched notions about what politics is, who is entitled to perform it, and where and how it can be practiced. Their struggles involve a range of actors, both inside and outside detention, and thus enact heterogeneous relations of political community and solidarity performed across contexts.
    
    This paper explores how these struggles that emerge in detention camps bring to light intricacies and entanglements of power that function to govern mobility in a range of interconnected contexts. These regimes of population management are revealed, through the camp, to link sites across the world through the reproduction of logics, technologies and practices. The tentacles of these regimes stretch transversally, through geopolitical and governmental contexts, but they also extend through time, emerging and re-emerging in different times and places. This paper looks at particular acts of resistance in detention centres run by the Australian and United Kingdom governments respectively. It explores how, in their struggles, people in camps forcibly bring to light often disavowed connections, linkages and histories, and tell the story of the global management of people and movement in new ways.
    
    Author: Lucy Kneebone (Queen Mary University of London)
  - European Union Readmission Agreements’ Necropolitical Mechanisms and Terminologies: An Analysis of the Joint Way Forward Declaration between the EU and Afghanistan
    
    In October 2016, against the backdrop of the so-called “refugee crisis”, the European Union (EU) and the Afghan government signed the Joint Way Forward Declaration (JWF), a document similar to an EU readmission agreement, which aimed to return unlimited numbers of ‘refused’ asylum seekers and ‘irregular’ Afghan migrants from Europe to Afghanistan over four years (2016-2020). In this context, research that investigates removal policies terminology combined with policies’ sub-sequent implementation remains scarce. Hence, by borrowing conceptual tools from the rich literature in post-colonial studies, particularly Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics and its constitution of death worlds, otherness and coloniality, I will argue that declarations such as the JWF are a clear example of the EU’s exercise of necropower. As much as necropolitics is about death, I contend that it also captures the allowance of returnees’ social and political deaths. Although different from direct killing and subsequent death, this means that the application of necropolitics to the study of removal policies helps us to think of necropower in terms of what is barely seen, especially when policies such as the JWF are crafted and implemented within the law and orchestrated through policy narratives and terminologies that legitimise operations of removals. Through a necropolitical lens, my paper will analyse the JWF Declaration, where I will argue that the use of narratives and terms such as 'return' to describe deportation deflect attention away from the act of expulsion and its devastating implications for those who are ‘returned’, illustrating the EU’s exercise of necropower.
    
    Author: Manuela Jorge (Queen Mary, University of London)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Perennial and New Challenges in International Law and Politics Room 6
  
  Sponsor: International Law and Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: ILPG Working group
  
  Chair: Rachel Kerr (King's College London)
  
  Discussant: Henry Lovat (University of Glasgow)
  - Taboo: Explaining the Legal Principles and Norms Behind Weapon Prohibitions
    
    This paper rethinks international law via the prohibition of weapons, examining the overall issue of whether arms control and disarmament principles apply in the same way to different categories of weapons. Using the concept of ‘taboo’, it examines the prohibitions of certain instruments of war which have developed throughout history in relation to the moral opprobrium concerning their usage. Through an examination of international treaties on conventional weapons, chemical weapons, and nuclear weapons, this paper explores the overall issue of whether arms control and disarmament principles apply in the same manner to different categories of weapons. This area of law, which has traditionally aimed to protect combatants and non-combatants from unnecessary suffering in war, has come to be regarded as an important component of international peace and security through the limitation and/or control of the uses and number of certain weapons. Inquiring into the motivations which lay behind the prohibition of certain types of weapons, the use of ‘taboo’ as a concept allows for an understanding of the different motivations and interests lying at the heart of arms control and disarmament treaties. Providing a valuable lens through which to understand the origins of different prohibitions of certain instruments of war and how these have been developed internationally.
    
    Author: Carmen Chas (University of Kent)
  - Operationalizing State Obligations in the Climate Context: The Role of Integrated Assessment Models in Devising a Systematic and Transparent Methodology of Legal Interpretation
    
    In international legal scholarship and case law around the world, the legal argument is gaining ground that state responsibility can be established for adverse effects of climate change on human rights. However, a cloud of opaqueness surrounds the question as to the specific content of states’ obligations, e.g. when it comes to identifying the mitigation level required of a state for it to comply with its human rights obligations. In arguing that state obligations in the climate context are in fact not a nebulous gestalt, this paper investigates the potential of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) for devising a methodology of legal interpretation that allows to navigate the law-science-policy nexus in a systematic and transparent manner. Forming a key basis for most equity assessments of states’ climate action, IAMs not only translate greenhouse gas emissions into atmospheric concentrations and global mean temperature change but they also model socioeconomic behaviour. While the latter is a key determinant for emission pathways, predicting human choices inevitably introduces an element of (un)certainty to IAMs’ results. Opposing the view that this, however, a priori disqualifies IAMs for use in the legal context, this paper closely examines IAMs’ methodology through a legal lens. The paper engages in a detailed analysis of how the degree of scientific certainty in IAMs’ results aligns with legal concepts of risk and uncertainty such as the precautionary principle as well as with questions of admissibility and the standard of proof before international human rights courts. The analysis concludes that, while minute awareness of IAMs’ limitations and assumptions is critical, IAMs represent an invaluable and unignorable source of evidence for on operationalization of states’ human rights obligations vis-à-vis climate change that is compliant with best available science.
    
    Author: Violetta Ritz (University of Kent)
  - Lost in transformation: the human rights we lost during the new state-centric order
    
    This article proposes thinking through a human rights´ perspective on the rights that we lost with the decision of staying to stop the corona virus from spreading. This decision, to stay home, was mostly imposed by States throughout the world. By saving lives with the restrictions imposed by States, some individuals have lost human rights such right to asylum, right to family reunification and even the right to pursue a project of life with a next to kind. Resembling times of war and conflict, the pandemic has conjectured a new model of life for human beings and this article does not propose to criticize the strict and necessary measures imposed by States to contain the spread of the COVID-19. Notwithstanding, beyond the widespread idea of “stay home and save lives”, there are several minorities group that did not benefit from the material means of obeying the new norms imposed by States. This article explores an anthropological view of individuals – especially migrants – from different countries in the world, to expose the new struggles and human rights´ violations that these individuals suffered during the pandemic crises during 2019. Through the use of narratives, it links together individual human rights´ violations in different contexts with the restrictions that several states imposed to its citizens and immigrants. This empirical analysis is assembled with the theoretical inputs that a new state-centric order has merged due to the severe restriction imposed by states, which should be pushing scholars to investigate these new phenomena rather than forgetting about IR theories.
    
    Author: Caroline de Lima e Silva (Lichtenberg- Kolleg Institute for Advanced Study)
  - Legal Rhetoric, Human Rights, and the Universal Periodic Review
    
    What is the language of effective human rights argumentation? When challenging a state’s human rights practices, actors can draw on a range of discursive options from the ethical to the political and legal. Current research on human rights argumentations highlights how rhetoric is used by actors to create political outcomes, emphasizing the role of human rights language on a case-by-case basis. However, little scholarship to date has relied on quantitative methodology to systematically analyze the role of legal claims, and their resulting acceptance or rejection, in global human rights argumentation. However, little scholarship to date has analyzed the role of legal claims in human rights argumentation on a quantitative and global scale. This study uses data on all recommendations made at the first two cycles of the Universal Periodic Review, a mechanism by which all UN member states are reviewed regularly on their human rights practices. Using an original coding of legal and nonlegal recommendations, this paper tests the hypothesis that legal claims will have the greatest likelihood of acceptance by a state under review compared to nonlegal claims, emphasizing the role of rhetoric in international relations and the use of law in human rights discourses.
    
    Author: Kyle Rapp (University of Southern California)
  - Trump’s assault on the International Criminal Court: Will the US ever be a leader in global justice and accountability?
    
    The US is often portrayed as a global leader in justice and accountability for atrocity crimes. The Nuremberg Trials, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Rwanda are just a few examples where the US played a leadership role in ensuring that those most responsible for humanity’s greatest crimes were held to account. Nevertheless, ensuring accountability for international crimes perpetrated by their own military and civilian leaders has remained a notably lacklustre affair. Perhaps one of the lowest moments of the Trump Administration, was when it attacked the International Criminal Court (ICC), and ventured to sanction key staff members of the ICC in ways ordinarily reserved for international terrorists and criminals. It brought into question the role of US leadership not only in 2020, but in previous Administrations to not only prevent atrocities, but to take a truly universal approach to global norms outlined in the UN Charter and the Nuremberg Principles (adopted by the UNGA unanimously). Moreover, it sharpened the unique inaction in the domestic US legal system to pursue accountability: particularly, for those international crimes regarded as peremptory norms (jus cogens) of international law, such as torture and genocide. While less likely to attack the ICC, it is unlikely that a Biden/Harris Administration will fundamentally change the US’s inaction in criminal accountability for its own, despite global norms and legal obligations to do so.
    
    This paper proposes a way out of the deadlock. It draws on previous case studies of criminal accountability pursued by non-state actors and state legal officials in foreign courts. In particular, it shows how victims and witnesses of international crimes, particularly those in the so-called ‘Global South’, have led criminal accountability against those most responsible. This serves as a counter-narrative to the notion that only Western actors care about (and pursue) criminal accountability, including at the ICC; as well as to the notion that witnesses and victims of international crimes are only ever passive actors in global accountability. It proposes a theoretical framework to explain these actors, and why they matter. Drawing on notions of community of practice in international relations, international criminal law as practice, and ‘standards’ and the ‘international rule of law’ in legal theory, it proposes an interdisciplinary theory to solving the problem of accountability. The theory explains how and why these actors take the practical steps necessary to extend the reach of international criminal law, and, in doing so, hold powerful actors to account.
    
    Author: Melinda Rankin (The University of Queensland)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Polish International Studies Association sponsored panel: Polish IR scholarship Room 7
  
  Sponsor: Conference/Management
  
  Convener: Marian Edward Halizak (University of Warsaw)
  
  Chair: Marian Edward Halizak (University of Warsaw)
  - US-China Hegemonic War
    
    US-China Hegemonic War"
    
    Author: Marian Edward Halizak (University of Warsaw)
  - Beyond the static world: leadership in the theoretical views of international relations
    
    Beyond the static world: leadership in the theoretical views of international relations"
    
    Author: Małgorzata Zachara (Jagiellonian University)
  - Onthology and epistemology of international relations in conditions of change
    
    Onthology and epistemology of international relations in conditions of change
    
    Author: Marek Pietras (Maria Sklodowska-Curie University)
  - International Relations in the European Union: theoretical approaches and explanatory challenges
    
    International Relations in the European Union: theoretical approaches and explanatory challenges
    
    Author: Joanna Dyduch (Jagiellonian University)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  
  Conference event / Polity book discussion: What's Wrong with NATO and How to Fix it Room 9
  
  Speakers: Andrew Cottey (University College Cork), Prof. Mark Webber (University of Birmingham), Martin Smith (Royal Military Academy Sandhurst), Dr Rita Floyd (University of Birmingham)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  Panel / Security, Foreign Policy and Globalisation Room 4
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Convener: Omer Tekdemir (Coventry University )
  
  Chair: Omer Tekdemir (Coventry University )
  
  Discussant: Jessica Northey (Coventry University)
  - Securitising Pandemics: Domestic-Political Explanations of Taiwan’s Response to COVID-19
    
    The conversational space for security impact of non-traditional threats of infectious diseases on the state, society and individuals has broadened among governments and political elites. Yet, its securitisation within states is not a homogenous process. Despite embracing the language of security, states attribute differing urgency, resources and policy priorities to the public health emergency. The outbreak of COVID-19, likewise, invoked varying responses from the governments ranging from preventive, reactionary to outright neglect. This article seeks to establish that domestic political factors play an instrumental role in determining and mediating responses to non-traditional security threats. Utilising the case of Taiwan, one of the few governments to pre-emptively address and successfully control the outbreak, the article discusses the effect that political leadership and institutional coordination have on state’s external and internal policy responses to the potential threat. It also reflects on Taiwan’s framing of the pandemic as a human security issue to denounce its exclusion from the World Health Organisation (WHO). In doing so, the study enriches the Securitisation framework with the empirical study of a majorly side-lined case in Asia and further addresses the policy effectiveness of the securitising and de-securitising actions.
    
    Author: Naina Singh (National Chung Hsing University)
  - Decentred Globalism and India’s Pivot towards the Arab Gulf
    
    Trade relations have linked India to the Gulf commercially, intellectually, culturally, linguistically, and religiously through history. Port cities along India’s western coast have traded with the Gulf for centuries, as evidenced by the penetration of Arabic words into regional languages spoken in western India. During the colonial period, the British saw the Gulf as part of their sphere of influence and as vital for securing all land and sea routes to their Indian Empire—the proverbial jewel in the British crown. After India gained independence in 1947, it established a strong trading relationship with the Gulf countries, which was reinforced by its leadership of the non-aligned movement and support for the Palestinian cause. However, the establishment of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in 1971 and tensions between India and Pakistan diluted India’s relationship with the Gulf. Post-1979, the Iranian Revolution and the Afghan jihad established a pattern of amity and enmity linking the South Asian and Middle Eastern Regional Security Complexes. The Iran-Saudi Arabia and India-Pakistan rivalries provided the context for a Pakistan-Saudi Arabia alliance in the Afghan jihad that was opposed by India and Iran. Nevertheless, India’s need for oil imports from the Arab Gulf, and the Arab Gulf’s need for blue-collar workers from India, ensured that India and the Arab Gulf remained economically engaged. In this chapter, I will argue that the deepening India-US friendship and the United States’ sanctions against Iran have led India to pivot away from Iran towards the Arab Gulf, as seen in recent years with the Modi government’s “Link West Policy.” Viewed through the prism of Regional Security Complex Theory, this can be understood in terms of India’s aspiration to great-power status and its consequent desire to operate beyond its region.
    
    Author: Saloni Kapur (FLAME University)
  - The Role of Domestic Factors in Turkish Foreign Policy towards Iran: The Case of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq
    
    The Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), a semi-autonomous area in Erbil in the north of Iraq and governed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), has emerged as a competitive area between Turkey and Iran since the two regional powers have sought to enhance their influence. This competition between them reflects on the domestic politics of the KRI. Turkey has established close ties with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) under the Barzanis and centered on Erbil, while Iran has mainly established warming affairs with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) controlled by the Talabanis and centered on Sulaymaniyah. Therefore, Turkey has economically and politically cooperated with the KDP to balance Iranian influence on Iraq and the KRI.
    
    However, Turkey entered a collaboration with Iran during the 2017 independence referendum of the KRG since the referendum posed a threat to their interests. As such, Ankara had in common with Tehran and sought to prevent the actualization of the referendum. This paper explains that the reason behind Turkey's rapprochement with Iran in the KRI is Turkey's domestic factors. The rise of nationalist and anti-Western perceptions in Turkish domestic politics and Turkey's security considerations against the Kurdish groups paved the way for a detente in Turkish Foreign Policy (TFP) towards Iran in the KRI for a short-term period. As a theoretical background, the paper utilizes Schweller's balance of interest approach to scrutinize this detente in TFP towards Iran in the KRI.
    
    Author: Cangul Altundas-Akcay (Durham University)
  - Humanitarianism or Securitization ? The AKP political elite and their Syria discourses
    
    This paper explores how the AKP (Justice and Development Party) political elite of Turkey sought to use the Syrian Civil War as a narrative tool to appeal to the Turkish public audience. Thus, this paper explains how the AKP administration used humanitarian and securitization narratives to appeal to the Turkish public. First, this paper shows how the AKP political elite adopted humanitarian narratives to vicariously identify with the Sunni Syrian Arabs. Hence, I express how the AKP leadership sought to claim the historical superiority towards the Syrian Arabs to appeal to the Turkish public from 2011 to 2015. Second, I underline how the AKP political elite adopted securitization discourses to depict the United States (US)support on the Syrian Kurds as a security threat. In that case, I explain how the AKP political elite used nationalist narratives which considered the US and the Syrian Kurds as “others” to appeal to the Turkish public from 2015 to 2020. Thus, I use Constructivism, Psychoanalysis Approach, and the Queer International Relations (IR) Theory to understand how the AKP leadership shifted their Syria narratives from humanitarian to securitization. I choose Constructivism to explore how the AKP political elite used religion, history, and culture to construct regional power identity towards the Syrian Arabs. I use the Psychoanalysis Approach to underline how the AKP political elite considered the Sunni Syrians as the extension of self to create the large group identity. I also utilize the Queer IR theory to express how the US support on the Syrian Kurds increased the hysteria among the AKP political elite. In methodology, I choose Critical Discourse Analysis to discover the AKPs humanitarian and securitization narratives on Syria, the US, and the Kurds.
    
    Author: Tarik Basbugoglu (Glasgow Caledonian University)
- 09:00 → 10:30
  
  Roundtable / The politics of comparison and relationality: colonial grammars, knowledge production and counter-politics Room 8
  
  The politics of comparison and relationality: colonial grammars, knowledge production and counter-politics
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Chair: Sharri Plonski (Queen Mary University of London)
  
  Participants: Rhys Machold (University of Glasgow) , Ananya Sharma (ASHOKA UNIVERSITY) , Kelly-Jo Bluen (LSE) , Katharine Hall (Queen Mary University ) , Francine Rossone de Paula (Queen's University Belfast) , Ida Roland Birkvad (Queen Mary University) , Somdeep Sen (Roskilde University)
- 11:00 → 12:15
  
  Conference event / A conversation with Professor Jenny Edkins, winner of BISA's 2021 Distinguished Contribution Prize BISA Room
  
  Speakers: Prof. Jenny Edkins (University of Manchester), Prof. Mark Webber (University of Birmingham), Prof. Ruth Blakeley (University of Sheffield)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  
  Roundtable / Challenging Coloniality in the International Anti-Trafficking Agenda to Reimagine Research Practice Room 2
  
  This roundtable discussion will focus on experiences of developing decolonial research practice within the field of human trafficking/anti-slavery, especially in relation to UN Sustainable Development Goal 8.7. There has been steadily growing international attention on this topic since the Palermo Protocol established an agreed definition of human trafficking in 2000. The main driver until recently has been the US, with its State Department producing an annual Trafficking in Persons report ranking performance, where low rankings can mean cuts to countries’ aid funding. More recently the UK government has sought to carve out a role and assert international leadership, notably with the issuance of a global ‘call to action’ in 2017, and an increase in the share of funding allocated through ODA (official development assistance). Despite this political focus, there has been widespread criticism of the effectiveness of interventions, particularly in relation to the dominant criminal justice paradigm and the lack of a human rights or social justice dimension, but also as a neo-colonial discourse (Okyere 2017). Scholars have raised concerns about the use of colonial imagery and appropriation of black suffering to further conservative agendas around immigration and sex work (O’Connell Davidson 2015, Beutin 2017). Scrutiny of international efforts has also criticised governments for a lack of strategic thinking, and an absence of a solid evidence base to inform programmes and actions (Independent Commission on Aid Impact 2020).
  Participants bring expertise in relation to undertaking research in this field in East, West and South Africa, as well as developing practices and methods for research in the development sector. They have worked together to develop the recent (2020) UK Collaborative on Development Research (UKCDR) guidance on safeguarding in international research, and as part of the Anti-Slavery Knowledge Network (AKN), funded through the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council through the Global Challenges Research Fund and hosted by the University of Liverpool in partnership with the University of Ghana (Legon), Universities of Nottingham and Hull. The AKN has commissioned and supported community-based and creative approaches to modern slavery as an international development issue working with a range of different partners.
  
  Sponsor: Africa and International Studies Working Group
  
  Chair: Alex Balch (Modern Slavery Policy & Evidence Centre (Research Director))
  
  Participants: Allen Kiconco (University of Witswatersrand) , Leona Vaughn (University of Liverpool) , Nii Kwartelai Quartey (Jamestown Community Theatre (Accra, Ghana)) , Lennon Mhishi (Anti Slavery Knowledge Network)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  
  Roundtable / Existentialism and International Relations I Room 9
  
  What place, if any, there is for existential thinking in IR? To what degree has it been, or should it be, taken up? Indeed, apart from a set of essays in the Journal of International Political Theory in 2013, or an essay in Ethics in 1960, there has been no systematic study of the role or place of existentialist thought in IR theorising. This absence is perplexing given existentialism is centrally implicated in so many of the debates that we have today on subjects such as war and world-making, empire and economics, health and humanity. This is before we even turn to consider the import of literature like Mary Shelley’s The Last Man or Simone De Beauvoir’s Old Age, the representation of authoritarian leaders as Albert Camus’ Caligula or the enduring issue of racism in Richard Wright’s Outsider.
  
  Bringing together interdisciplinary scholars working on pandemics and the politics of time, war and world-making, feminism and micropolitics, this roundtable asks: What are the merits and limits of an existential approach to international relations in the present political moment? (While our roundtable assesses the relevance of existentialism, our panel develops fresh existentialist arguments about IR).
  
  Sponsor: Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working Group
  
  Chair: Joanne Yao (Queen Mary University of London)
  
  Participants: Liane Hartnett (La Trobe University) , Cian O'Driscoll (Australian National University) , Andy Hom (University of Edinburgh) , Eileen M. Hunt (University of Notre Dame)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / Giving primacy to movement: re-theorising global and transversal politics Room 3
  
  Sponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working Group
  
  Conveners: Alice Engelhard (LSE) , Jef Huysmans (Queen Mary, University of London)
  
  Chair: Jef Huysmans (Queen Mary, University of London)
  - Constitution of Australia’s island-borders
    
    This paper is about the ‘repeating islands’ of Australia. It traces the role of islands in the constitution of Australia’s settler-colonial borders. It argues that since British settlement, a particular island imagination has occupied a prominent place in the constitution of Australia’s exclusive borders. The paper shows how the islands surrounding the mainland were colonised, emptied, and reassembled as sites of incarceration, leprosy colonies, Indigenous reserves, medical institutions, and internment camps. By investigating how islands have performed a series of possible realities, the paper seeks to understand how they define Australian space and identity, and in doing so, it shows that the historical origins of Australia’s contemporary carceral borders.
    
    Author: Umut Ozguc (Deakin University)
  - Making sense of movement: tourists, soldiers, explorers
    
    Despite calls for attentiveness to movement and mobile subjects in global politics, the primary and constitutive role of movement is often obscured. This paper develops the argument that a focus on mobile subjects often reproduces static notions of global politics by making this movement appear to be epiphenomenal to a fixed and ahistoric background which it traverses. By analysing three categories by which movement is made sense of I show that the study of movement may paradoxically function to obscure its significance. Attending to the figures of ‘tourist’, ‘soldier’ and ‘explorer’ this paper explores how the political significance of movement is elided through categorialisation.
    
    Author: Alice Engelhard (LSE)
  - Bodily Movement, Postcolonial Melancholia, and Architectures of Madness and War at the Imperial War Museum, London
    
    The Imperial War Museum, London, rightly self-presents as a global authority on armed conflict. This paper explores how its architecture helps to establish the museum as a space of expertise on political violence, while also unwittingly reproducing racial hierarchies. Distinctively, the IWM is housed in a former psychiatric hospital, the Bethlem Royal Hospital. Just like its predecessor, the asylum, the museum uses architecture to discipline the movement of bodies in space. This organized movement produces categories of meaning relevant to war, peace, and race. For instance, galleries with highly directed movement didactically support the demonstration that some deployments of force (such as those used by Germany during the First and Second World War against white Europeans) are illegitimate. In contrast, galleries with undirected visitor flows introduce other violent activities (those associated with liberal war, but also some militant activities often labelled as terrorism) as requiring a nuanced understanding. While the latter galleries attempt to stimulate critical thinking, they express what Paul Gilroy called ‘postcolonial melancholia’ – a neurotic aversion of the deliquescence of the British Empire and the violence that came with it. The paper concludes that IWM has much to gain from taking on board the insights of postcolonial critiques. Openly discussing the ‘small wars’ of empire would help Britain work through its postcolonial melancholia. In addition, managing space and movement so that non-White casualties of war may be grieved on a par with white ones would make the space more inclusive and supportive of racial equality.
    
    Author: Audrey Reeves (Virginia Tech)
  - Home in the midst of movement: mapping relational belongings in South Asia
    
    To the extent that home as a concept appears in international political theory, it is read as providing the inclusion/exclusion and inside/outside fundaments that serve as basis for the politics of nations and nation-states. Relatedly, in light of global migration crises, and the associated displacement and homelessness, theoretical exercise around the question of home seeks to identify, situate, and index it locationally – here, there, or elsewhere. In this context, I wish to rethink home experientially and relationally. Drawing from the South Asian experience, I argue that here home is an immanently moving base for relating, such that belonging is always already multiple. Not confined to spaces within walls, home spills out on to such spaces of shared becoming as streets, terraces, and courtyards, extending belonging in movement. The space of the inside is also not a sealed space. It is constantly reconfiguring with the ingress of all sorts of bodies: elemental bodies like dust or seasonal bodies like heat and monsoonal rains, and so on. Amidst this abundant repletion, a characteristic of the densely populous region of South Asia, home is always shifting or expanding or shrinking in relation. Foregrounding movement as the basis of encounter, I seek to map home in its shared ways of becoming. This enables dynamic conceptions of belonging and community, where encounter, porosity, density, and flux take precedence over such fixed categories as location, territory, ground, and identity, calling for an urgent shift from the politics of exclusion to the politics of movement.
    
    Author: Srishti Malaviya (Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU))
  - Antinomy: Nomads and the States-System
    
    For a long time, nomads were of little interest to IR, but this has begun to change in the last few years. In particular, there is a growing historical literature on the role of the nomadic Eurasian steppe in influencing the historical development of sedentary polities in Europe and in China. In theoretical terms, the existing literature has been defined by a binary opposition between the nomad and the state: the mobile nomad has been conceptualised as a material and/or ideational threat to the sedentary state, which in turn is used to explain why states have so often pursued policies of discrimination, marginalisation, and forced sedentarisation toward nomads. This oppositional framing between the nomad and the state, I argue, has been grounded on a ‘traditionalist’ or indeed ‘colonialist’ conception of the nomad, which depicts nomadism as a pre-modern form of social and political organisation that historically and/or logically precedes territorial statehood. In contrast, this paper shifts the focus to the myriad of ways in which the modern states-system itself is continually producing nomads of its own. This production of new forms of nomadism has become increasingly evident in the globalised world of the twenty-first century, with the rise of ‘digital nomads’ and ‘global nomads’, but their conceptual antecedents can be traced back to the consolidation of the modern state in the nineteenth century.
    
    Author: Heiskanen Jaakko (University of Cambridge)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / New Dimensions of Asylum and Migration Room 6
  
  Sponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group
  
  Convener: Christian Kaunert (University of South Wales)
  
  Chair: Maria Koinova (University of Warwick)
  - The Roles and Impacts of Diasporas in International Relations: Case studies of Turkish Diaspora in Germany and Armenian Diaspora in France
    
    Diasporas as defier of conventional meaning of state receive growing attention from policy makers around the world. Moreover, recognition of importance of diaspora in international affairs increases due to their roles and activities. They organize and create ethnic lobbies and advocate multicultural foreign policies. They are, sometimes, acting as mediators or bridge that can support developing relations between their homeland and host land. However, they also can be reason of relationship breakdown. In this research, I will examine the roles and impacts of diasporas in international affairs by case studies which are related to Turkish Diaspora in Germany and Armenian Diaspora in France. This study will discuss to what extent of impact of Turkish Diaspora is on Germany’s foreign policy compared with Armenian Diaspora in France. More than 5 million people of Turkish descent live in Europe. They have important impact on not only Germany’s foreign policy but also European policy. However, despite huge potential of Turkish Diaspora for diplomacy, they are not effective as much as Armenian Diaspora due to their divided organization structure, little interest in European politics and political parties, lack of conceptual discussions about meaning of Turkish Diaspora and deficiency of formation of Diaspora consciousness. Also, some cultural, social, and political similarities which are different from Turkish between European and Armenians bolster up the diplomatic power of Armenian Diaspora in France. In this study, I draw on data about perception and sphere of Diasporas, depth interview, document review, survey and statistic.
    
    Author: Alperen Usta (Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University)
  - The Everyday at the Border: the mundane routinization of emergency assistance
    
    This paper considers whether there can be radical political potential in practices of everyday solidarity between migrants and citizens at the border. It takes as its focus the town of Briançon on the Franco-Italian border, where citizens have hosted nearly 12,000 migrants since 2017. Here, mundane tasks, like doing laundry, cooking meals, and buying train tickets, take on outsize meaning because these everyday activities, when done for people without legal status, are relegated to the margins of legality. There is a tension between the ongoing emergency of constant arrivals across a violent border, and the routine nature of the assistance that citizens have been providing to migrants for the past four years. Ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic illustrates how the new emergency presented new challenges and new forms of repression. Yet rather than destabilizing solidarity, responses were integrated into the routine practices already established. The paper considers these routine practices of emergency assistance as performances of everyday politics through which citizens challenge the state to include the noncitizen outsider.
    
    Author: Janina Pescinski (Queen Mary University of London)
  - Disembedding Securitisation in the EU’s refugee policy? Reflections from a critical historical perspective
    
    Disembedding Securitisation in the EU’s refugee policy? Reflections from a critical historical perspective
    
    Author: Cristina Blanco Sio-Lopez (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  
  Conference event / PGN Meet the Editors II - CLOSED SESSION, INVITE ONLY Room 8
  
  Speakers: Dr Althea-Maria Rivas (SOAS), Christian Lequesne (Sciences Po), Dr Emily Flore St Denny (University of Copenhagen), Greg Stiles (Global Policy), Hill Christopher (University of Cambridge), Dr James Strong (Queen Mary University of London), Janina Pescinski (Queen Mary University of London), Dr Jocelyn Mawdsley (Newcastle University), Dr Khursheed Wadia (University of Warwick), Milja Kurki (Aberystwyth University), Prof. Saskia Stachowitsch (University of Vienna), Tom Vaughan (Aberystywth University), Xymena Kurowska
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / Political Studies Association of Ireland sponsored panel: Global Challenges – Power, Politics, and Policies of Maritime Governance, Climate Change, and Covid-19 Room 7
  
  Sponsor: Conference/Management
  
  Convener: Markus Pauli (Dublin City University)
  
  Chair: Markus Pauli (Dublin City University)
  - Governance in the Indo-Pacific: India’s contribution to maritime order
    
    India’s official definition of the Indo-Pacific stretches from the Arabian Sea across to the Pacific Ocean. It is a far more comprehensive conceptualisation than usually invoked by other major actors and reflects the country’s multi-regional oceanic outlook, drawn from its extensive coastline and strategic islands. While there are limits to India’s ability to project power across this massive expanse it has greatly increased its visibility and ability to contribute to maritime governance, especially within the Indian Ocean.
    The paper examines India’s role within two areas of maritime governance: humanitarian and disaster relief (HADR) and as a member of the International Maritime Organisation, the main regulator of international shipping. Both cases explore how India is contributing to multi-national regimes of cooperation, shaping rules and practices and engaging with other powers vested in the Indo-Pacific. This marks a clear change from the past when the stated objective was to work towards keeping areas such as the Indian Ocean free of extra-regional influences.
    The paper investigates the motives and aspirations behind India’s actions both as a stakeholder and aspiring leading power. It also discusses how this can strengthen the architecture for multilateral collaboration within the Indo-Pacific.
    
    Author: Jivanta Schottli ( Dublin City University)
  - COVID-19 and Asymmetric interdependence in Aisa Pacific: Power Transition between the US and China
    
    The COVID-19 pandemic is currently analyzed as a social and economic problem, predominately at the national level, even though certain activities are coordinated at an international or supranational
    level. While there are different levels of vulnerability in countries, the pandemic is having an important affected in the relative distribution of power in the global system which will increase in the aftermath of the pandemic and resulting economic crisis. This problem is especially visible in relations between the current leader of the international system, i.e. the United States and the main challenger, i.e. the People’s Republic of China.
    The main goal of this paper is an analysis of the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the transformation of the global system, with a special focus on the role of the United States and China. The COVID-19 pandemic will be analyzed as a catalyzer of the power transformation between the United States and China. The analysis will be based on the power transition theory (Organski-Kugler). The analysis will consider three areas of leadership in the system and the influence of COVID-19 on them, i.e. relative distribution of power, role in international organizations, as well as cooperation/allegiance of other countries, with a focus on middle powers towards the United States and China.
    
    Authors: Niall Duggan (University College Cork) , Marcin Grabowski (Jagiellonian University )
  - New Forms of Governance for Climate Change Mitigation in Asia and Europe
    
    This paper presents the findings from primary data on multilevel climate change mitigation initiatives – with a focus on new forms of governance in India and Germany. It analyses under what conditions and to what extent new forms of governance, such as partnerships between public, private and civil society actors – as enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17 – contribute to achieving concrete SDG goals related to a low carbon society in the sectors of energy and transportation. The multilevel analysis (municipality, state, national and supranational level) focuses on the impact as well as legitimacy, transparency and accountability.
    Achieving the triple bottom line of social, environmental and economic sustainable development constitutes a complex governance challenge – not least in times of populism, international trade disputes and the Covid pandemic. This research explores how governments draw on the co-creation of policies and initiatives to foster an innovative, competitive and inclusive low-carbon economy.
    The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews conducted with key public, private and civil society actors in New Delhi, Mumbai, Berlin, and Frankfurt– the political and financial capitals of India and Germany as well as with core stakeholders on the European level in Brussels.
    
    Author: Markus Pauli (Dublin City University)
  - China and the Global Discursive Response to Covid-19
    
    States have powerful incentives to present positive images of themselves abroad. Doing so helps them in a variety of ways, including enhancing their political security, achieving foreign policy goals, and persuading international allies to help change international norms. In times of crisis these incentives become acute and may see states mobilize resources and networks to change the narrative about a particular event. Covid-19 presents one such crisis point. The pandemic has challenged the ability of countries everywhere to present an image of competence and control. Because the virus first emerged in Wuhan, China late 2019, however, the origins of the virus and the Chinse government’s response have been near the center of the global conversation during the pandemic. Consistent with its practices in the Xi Jinping era, the Chinese government has proactively sought to influence global discourse about its responsibility for the outbreak, the measures it took to control the virus at home, and the assistance and model that it provided to governments abroad looking to cope with Covid-19. Previous research suggests that China’s response will be tailored to different regional and linguistic audiences, eschewing a one-size-fits-all external propaganda approach.
    However, the Chinese government cannot control independent media in foreign countries and must try other methods to shape its image, ranging from social media to public diplomacy. A key indicator of how well these efforts work is the presentation of China in the international media. To investigate this question, we turn to quantitative text analysis.
    We create a novel multilingual text corpus consisting of over 1,000,000 online newspaper articles mentioning China and Covid-19 between January and December 2020. From these articles we extract all mentions of China and their immediate context of ±30 words. Afterwards, we combine human coding and Latent Semantic Scaling, a semi-supervised scaling method relying on word embeddings, to position each text on a scale from China being described as a culprit to being presented as a saviour. Having merged these scores with the daily number of Covid-19 cases and deaths in each country, we analyse how the assessment of China has changed over time, and test how changes in the number of cases and deaths in a country correlate with the coverage of China.
    This research contributes theoretically by illuminating questions in three areas. First, it highlights the limits of China’s external propaganda by illuminating the variation in presentation of China in media outlets it does not control. Second, it links the practices of authoritarian image management directly to outcomes, with Beijing clearly wishing to influence how its covid response was perceived and this article providing the tools to measure how effective that was. Third, the paper accentuates our knowledge of China’s external propaganda output, which is a key advance as scholars debate ongoing changes in the international normative environment.
    
    Author: Alexander Dukalskis (University College Dublin)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / The prioritisation of health: national, regional and international perspectives Room 1
  
  Sponsor: Global Health Working Group
  
  Convener: Adele Langlois (University of Lincoln)
  
  Chair: Stephen Roberts (UCL)
  
  Discussant: Eva Hilberg
  - Regulatory Bottlenecks in Global Health
    
    This paper will investigate regulatory bottlenecks in global health. International regulations typically evolve over four stages: (1) need identification and acceptance (2) drafting (3) adoption and (4) implementation. Effective regulation can be stymied at any of these stages. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), for example, has been at the forefront of bioethics regulation in the last two decades. Yet recent attempts to establish international instruments have failed to get beyond the idea stage, even when the need for regulation has been clearly identified. In 2015 UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee recommended a ban on human reproductive cloning, but the organisation has not acted on this. In September 2017 the same committee, in its draft report on big data and health, recommended that UNESCO negotiate a convention on the protection of privacy, but this has also not been taken forward. Even when regulations are drafted and adopted, these processes can take several years and interest-based bargaining can lead to weak or ambiguous content. Implementation is often patchy, hampered by lack of capacity and/or will at both international and national levels. This paper will present a theoretical framework for the ‘regulatory bottleneck’ concept, drawn from the regime theory and global governance literature within International Relations. The framework with be the springboard for case study research on regulatory bottlenecks in global health, including UNESCO’s failure to develop a convention on health data privacy.
    
    Author: Adele Langlois (University of Lincoln)
  - Brazilian Foreign and Health Ministries: different institutional cultures in the search for global health
    
    The increasing complexity of Brazilian foreign policy, illustrated by the plurality of agencies taking part at the policymaking process as well by the diversity of its agenda between 1990s up to 2014 approximately, has raised many academic questions. This paper discusses how global health became a strong topic in the Brazilian foreign policy by examining the relationship between the Brazilian Foreign Ministry (Itamaraty) and the Brazilian Health Ministry, with particular attention to their views on human rights and national interests and their raking of priorities. Our main argument is that, despite the significant Brazilian expertise on collective health international cooperation, one of the reasons why it took so long for global health to become an important issue of Brazilian Foreign Policy, should be searched on the institutional culture differences of each ministry.
    
    Authors: Leticia Pinheiro (IESP-UERJ) , Livia Liria Avelhan (FGV-SP)*
  - Latin American Regionalism Post Covid-19: A New Agenda for Regional Social Policy?
    
    The 2000s were marked by the rise of post-liberal and post-hegemonic regionalism in Latin America, a ‘transformative’ development in the history of regionalism in the region where social policy, propelled by the political left turn, economic growth due to the commodity price boom and previous decade of civil society agitation enabled the mounting of a robust challenge to neoliberalism and trade based understandings of integration.
    Organisations like the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) attempted to redefine the purposes ang goals of regionalism and forwarded an intergovernmental, transwelfarist regional agenda promoting cooperation in health, education and infrastructure development. However, with the crisis of leadership, change in the political leadership and economic downturn the agenda has not only been rejected it stands debunked as of now.
    Given the rigours of the pandemic and the particularly debilitating social, political and economic costs it has unleashed in the region this paper attempts to argue that the earlier binary of state versus market logic can no longer adequately explain the regional agenda of Latin America. Given the social agitations already underway in 2019 in several states but most importantly Chile, the fatigue of progressivism as an ideology and the incumbent need to develop regional cooperation mechanisms where multilateral institutions are increasingly insufficient, the future of regional social policy, especially on health along with diverse political agendas point to a more convoluted and complicated regionalism.
    
    Author: Devika Misra (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / Tracing Intersections of ‘Race’, Gender, and the Colonial Afterlives of Foreign Policy Organisations Room 5
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Conveners: Columba Achilleos-Sarll (University of Warwick) , Hannah Wright (LSE)
  
  Chair: Julia Welland (University of Warwick)
  
  Discussant: Toni Haastrup (University of Stirling)
  - Early Female Envoys of India: When the Post-colonial Women Spoke to the World
    
    The history of the women of the non-West in the larger historical accounts of the post-World War II diplomatic writings stays largely amiss. At the precipice of decolonisation as newly independent countries sent their delegations to platforms like the United Nations, several women participated in the making of what became politics of the day. A narrative that remains mostly unexplored. This paper takes on this inquiry and asks the question, “Where are the women?” (Enloe 1989). Drawing from the life and experiences of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Begum Shareefah Hamid Ali, Renuka Ray, Amrit Kaur, amongst many, this paper goes back to the archives to probe the tales of the making of international politics that lay in the pioneering female narratives of the time. These include discussions on the questions of race and colonialism in the international forum. The paper employs a qualitative, exploratory research framework to investigate the early transnational female networks and the Indian foreign policy establishment in newly independent India and their influence of the making of India’s place in the world.
    
    Author: Khushi Padma Singh (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
  - Diversity and Inclusion in UK National Security Policymaking: 'Mission Critical' or Business as Usual?
    
    In 2016, the Chilcot Inquiry into the UK’s involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq concluded that one of the factors contributing to the ill-fated decision to join the US-led war was a culture of ‘groupthink’ inside the UK national security policymaking community. In response, the government adopted a newly invigorated ‘diversity and inclusion’ agenda that sought to increase ‘diversity of thought’ within national security policymaking by increasing the representation and inclusion of women, ethnic minorities and other under-represented groups, and promoting a culture that encourages challenge to prevailing ways of thinking. This paper – part of a wider study on how processes of gendering and racialisation (re)produce militarism and coloniality in UK national security policymaking discussions – explores this ‘diversity of thought’ discourse, based on participant observation and interviews with UK civil servants working in national security policymaking (2017-18). The paper argues that while this discourse begins to disturb the construction of the securocrat as a neutral, disembodied producer of knowledge – a construction that conceals the operation of gender, ‘race’ and other axes of power – it nonetheless fails to interrogate the role of power in knowledge production. Because it frames gender and ‘race’ as markers of identity and not as systems of power, the ‘diversity of thought’ discourse fails to uncover how organisational cultures constituted by whiteness and upper/middle class bureaucratic masculinities serve to marginalise knowledges that could challenge coloniality and militarism in UK national security policymaking.
    
    Author: Hannah Wright (London School of Economics)
  - The Dis/Appearance of 'Race' in the UK's Women, Peace and Security Agenda
    
    This article asks: How does 'race' dis/appear in the UK's Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda? To chart the ways race dis/appears, the article analyses a large body of empirical data including UK National Action Plans (NAPs) on WPS, Annual Reports to Parliament, freedom of information (FOI) documents, parliamentary debates, and interviews conducted with government and NGO professionals working in the field of WPS in the UK. The article examines the relationship between the collective erasure of 'race', the reproduction of (gendered and racialised) subjectivities, and the institutional practices that organise the UK’s implementation of WPS in accordance with global hierarchies of power. This article reveals four practices of gendering and racialisation: the erasure of 'race' and colonialism in UK-WPS discourse; the circulation of imperial feminism; the spatial organisation of WPS that reiterates geographies of conflict and spheres of influence; and the construction of both 'leadership' and 'expertise'. I argue that these interlinked processes are constituted of and constitutive by gendered and racialised sovereignty. Using the WPS agenda to counter-pose ‘us’ from ‘them’ becomes part of the way in which the UK represents itself as secure, sovereign, and gender-progressive.
    
    Author: Columba Achilleos-Sarll (University of Warwick)
  - ‘Saving Brown Women’ from the Bomb? Racism, Colonialism and Transnational Solidarity in Feminist Anti-Nuclear Activism
    
    The politics of race in white-dominated, Western feminist anti-nuclear activism has not received significant academic attention – despite extensive critiques of racial and colonial hierarchies in global feminism, and some parallel discussion of exclusion in anti-nuclear organising. In response, this paper investigates whether and how racial and colonial hierarchies were reproduced and contested in the transnational solidarity politics of one UK network, Women working for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (WWNFIP). Through a discourse analysis of a newsletter archive, the paper first shows how race and colonialism are depicted as central to the production, testing and storage of nuclear weapons in the Pacific region, before exploring the racialised identity constructions of both British-based anti-nuclear activists and the Pacific Islanders whose struggles they sought to support. Attending to ambivalences in the representation of white privilege and indigenous agency, I nonetheless argue that UK Cold War feminist campaigners centred racism and colonialism in their struggle to a greater degree and in more creative ways than has yet been acknowledged. I end by briefly considering the implications for current feminist re-tellings of Cold War anti-nuclear activism as well as for contemporary feminist interventions in anti-nuclear politics.
    
    Author: Catherine Eschle (University of Strathclyde)
  - The Violence of Feminist Foreign Policy
    
    In 2009, the Canadian government made a widely criticised announcement which instructed the Ministries responsible for foreign affairs and international development to replace the term “gender equality” with “equality between women and men” in policy documents. A few years later in 2016, the launch of a Canadian feminist foreign policy and the introduction of gender-based analysis + (GBA+), to policy frameworks under the Trudeau government was celebrated by civil society, NGOs and academics. This paper argues that both of these shifts represented efforts to invisibilise the racialised and gendered inequalities of Canada’s international programming and policy. The last shift in particular has constructed a white liberal feminist vision as a radical and inclusive alternative, and reinforced the marginalisation and erasure of the gendered and racialised realities of women in Canada and abroad. Ultimately, Canada’s feminist foreign policy has little to do with a global vision of gender equality, solidarity and justice rather it rests on a desire of white liberal feminists to construct themselves as emancipatory agents.
    
    Author: Althea-Maria Rivas (SOAS)
- 11:00 → 12:30
  Panel / Winning and Losing in US Foreign Policy Room 4
  
  Sponsor: US Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: USFP Working group
  
  Chair: Alexandra Homolar (University of Warwick)
  
  Discussant: Matthew Hill (Liverpool John Moores University )
  - President Biden's Burden: Undoing Trumpism in an Age of Uncertainty
    
    The new president of the United States will take oath on January 20, 2021. He must be equipped with superpower skills to overcome the havoc that was created by the previous president. This paper hopes to present the facilitating and hindering factors that will contribute to President Biden's foreign policy making and undoing Trumpism.
    The first part of the paper will compile what Biden has promised to do. The Foreign Affairs article that was authored by Joe Biden , the Inaugural speech and National Security Strategy of 2021 will be analyzed in putting forward the agenda.
    The second part will dwell upon what needs to be undone by the new president.
    The final part will be policy prescriptions of what factors will be facilitating and hindering the Biden Presidency in attaining the goal of how "America Must Lead Again."
    
    Keywords: U.S Foreign Policy, World Politics, International Relations
    
    Author: zeynep selcuk (Fenerbahce University)
  - Trump, the Realist
    
    With the Trump presidency coming to an end, an assessment of the nature of Trump’s foreign policy is warranted. The aim of this paper is to examine with what International Relations theory Trump’s grand strategy conforms best. Its main argument is that the main tenets of Trump’s foreign policy are closest to the realist tradition in International Relations. His foreign policy is marked by a notable disregard of the domestic complexion of foreign states, be it allies or adversaries, a strictly transactional approach to interstate interactions, and a general disdain for regime change operations and nation-building. Illustrating Trump’s realist inclinations, the paper examines Trump’s attitude towards NATO, his Iran policy, and his trade war with China in a series of mini-case studies.
    
    Author: Payam Ghalehdar (University of Göttingen)
  - Populism and the Affective Politics of Humiliation Narratives
    
    This paper examines how communicative practices, emotion, and everyday experiences of insecurity interlink in processes of populist political mobilization. Combining insights from international security studies, political psychology, and populism research, it demonstrates how populist political agents from the right of the political spectrum have constructed a powerful security imaginary around the loss of past national greatness that entraps the experiences of those who feel disempowered and ties existential anxieties to concerns with immigration, globalization, and integration. As we show, within the populist security imaginary, humiliation is the key discursive mechanism that helps turn abstract notions of enmity into politically consequential affective narratives of loss, betrayal, and oppression. Humiliation binds together an ostensibly conflicting sense of national greatness and victimhood to achieve an emotive response that enables a radical departure from established domestic and international policy norms and problematizes policy choices centred on collaboration, dialogue, and peaceful conflict resolution.
    
    Key words: populism, security studies, narratives, affect, humiliation
    
    Authors: Alexandra Homolar (University of Warwick) , Georg Löfflmann (University of Warwick)*
  - Challenges of Legitimation: Winnability in the American Way of War and the War on Terror
    
    Scholarship on the “American way of war” suggests that domestic support for war policies should be generated by policymakers promising and achieving a rapid and total victory. However, the War on Terror constitutes a stark deviation from this paradigm. How then have US presidents legitimated the War on Terror despite its breaks with the American way of war? While scholarship has examined ideas of success and victory in the War on Terror, their role in the process of legitimation has not been explore. To address this lacuna, this paper introduces the concept of winnability to study the legitimation efforts of US presidents, given that the capacity for a war to be won touches upon the crux of the justification of war policies. The paper employs a discourse analysis of speeches by George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, finding a significant degree of rhetorical variability between presidents regarding the issue of winnability. Significantly however, the paper finds that all three presidencies have reflected either an inability to legitimate an accepted endpoint for the War on Terror or abandon the finality of the American way of war without significant levels of critique. These findings call for further research on the role of winnability in the legitimation and termination of the War on Terror.
    
    Author: Hall Jonny (London School of Economics and Political Science)
- 12:30 → 14:00
  
  Conference event / Coffee and conversation networking session - International Law WG; Russian and Eurasian Security WG; GIRWG; SE Europe WG; CPD WG; Global Health WG; PPWG; Ethics and World Politics WG; Nuclear Order WG; Interpretivism in IR WG Room 10
- 12:30 → 14:00
  
  Conference event / Exhibitor Hall Conference Website
- 14:00 → 15:30
  
  Conference event / KEYNOTE 3: Reset the International System and Reboot International Studies? Delivered by Dr Agnes Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International and former UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary killings - SPONSORED BY PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Webinar Room
  
  Speakers: Dr Agnes Callamard (UN/Amnesty International), Dr James Rogers (University of Southern Denmark)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / (Re)Constructing to Govern: Security Praxis and the Production of Acceptable Citizenry Room 1
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Conveners: Alice Martini , Tom Pettinger (Warwick University) , Raquel da Silva (ISCTE)
  
  Chair: Raquel da Silva (ISCTE)
  - Imagination and the politics of pre-emption: NATO's Counterterrorism in the Mediterranean Sea after 9/11
    
    How do scenarios of dangerous futures imagined in the framework of the post-9/11 counterterrorism shape security institutions? Critical Security Studies (CSS)’s dominant answer is that state apparatus are significantly transformed by the use of new technologies of prediction which are very prolific in imagining potential risks. The present article questions this technologically determinist thesis. Introducing the notion of weak field in the study of pre-emption, it argues that the political sociology of transnational fields of power can help us in historicize and asses more precisely the impact of imagination over power and control in the pre-emptive era. The article analyses NATO’s reaction to 9/11 as a case-study and is based on 40 qualitative interviews with NATO's decision-makers. It shows how the fabrication of potential terrorist threats by NATO’s practitioners, that served to justify the pre-emptive use of the collective self-defence clause of the Washington Treaty (Article 5), evolved into an ambiguous support for NATO’s military policing of the Mediterranean basin and into its involvement in migration control.
    
    Author: Julien Pomarède (Université libre de Bruxelles)
  - The subjugated knowledge of Prevent: UK terrorism pre-emption and the disruptive history of Northern Ireland
    
    This paper explores the relationship between Britain's counter-radicalization programme Prevent and the testimony of those convicted of terrorism offences in Northern Ireland. It highlights the striking contradiction that exists within the United Kingdom, whereby Northern Ireland does not implement radicalization pre-emption despite its active dissident groups and notorious history of conflict, yet the rest of the UK does. Utilizing primary interviews with 17 Prevent officials (including Channel's hard-to-reach ‘de-radicalization’ mentors) and over 30 Northern Irish former combatants, the discussion analyses the two fundamentally different ways of considering terrorism risk in the UK. It asks how ‘pre-crime risk’ is observed and intervened upon only on one side of the border (mainland Britain), when a fragile ceasefire best describes post-conflict reality on the other (Northern Ireland). We find that the discourse of radicalization subjugates the history of political insurgency in Northern Ireland, rendering invisible any explanations for (and structural causes of) violence. The discussion points to the invention of ‘the (de)radicalizable subject’, an invention which silences the history of insurgency in Northern Ireland and the voices of its perpetrators. Ex-militants staunchly rebut any narrative that they were ‘vulnerable’ to radicalization, but rather were heroes who actively chose armed rebellion. Yet Prevent would assert these individuals were exploited, in need only of more rigorous personal resilience. This paper brings the disjuncture of UK terrorism knowledge to the forefront, exposing how the discourse of risk, vulnerability, and pre-emption necessarily silences militant testimonies – inventing a world without referring to its inhabitants.
    
    Author: Tom Pettinger
  - Bordered Violences and Unruly Spaces of Belonging : Pellet Guns and the Right to Maim in Kashmir
    
    The Indian government abrogated Articles 370 and 35 of the constitution on August 5th, 2019. This unilateral act of nullification executed through a constitutionally questionable procedure led to the inauguration of a new phase of protracted tensions underlying India’s relationship with Kashmir. Drawing on Jasbir Puar’s work on the sovereign ‘power to maim’ this article seeks to explore the changing metrics of imperialism/colonialism in context of occupation by post-colonial nation-states by analysing the disputed territory of Kashmir. Post 2016, ushered the use of pellet guns leading to demonstrable concomitant injuries which has led many civilians perpetually blinded. The paper develops on the complementary logic to the presence of Indian forces and the manifestation of settler colonialism which thrives on creating and maintaining the population of Kashmir as ‘permanently impaired’ yet simultaneously ‘living’ for exercising state control. The blinded body is used as an ‘analytical tool’ to trace the socio-political construction of the Kashmiri body within the nationalist imaginary and demonstrate how the visual instantiates the political. The paper concludes by offering a provocation into de-colonising the recent ‘visual turn’ in International Relations by inquiring into the visceral ways of seeing affected by the use of pellet guns and how the blinded body serves both as a sight and site of politics.
    
    Author: Ananya Sharma (Ashoka University )
  - Muslim civil society and the risk discourse in counter-radicalization policies: the case of the U.K. and Canada
    
    Studies from the U.K. have highlighted that, in the interest of pre-empting ‘radicalization,’ counter-radicalization (CR) policies have encroached social and cultural domains of society (Qurashi, 2018; Ragazzi, 2016). To achieve their ends, CR policies rely on community partnerships; Muslim civil society organizations (CSOs) become interlocutors connecting state institutions to Muslim communities. Yet, little is understood about how Muslim CSOs balance (often competing) demands from state institutions and the Muslim communities they serve. Using theories of organizational institutionalism, this paper analyzes how Muslim CSOs in the U.K. and Canada develop responses to CR policies. I use a case-oriented, comparative approach across the two countries that share liberal welfare regimes and have sizeable share of Muslim minorities but have taken divergent approaches to CR. Data for the study are drawn from qualitative interviews with leaders of Muslim CSOs. In the U.K., Prevent and the recent counter-extremism strategy are sites of governance of British Muslims based on risk and racial othering (Ali, 2020; Martin, 2020). Canada formalized a national CR strategy in 2018, but CR has been rolled into national security policing practices that have “Muslimized” the problem of radicalization (Ahmad, 2020; Nagra & Monaghan, 2020). I find that the responses of Muslim CSOs to CR policies are impacted by discourses about the riskiness of Muslims.
    
    Author: Fahad Ahmad (Carleton University, School of Public Policy and Administration)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  
  Conference event / Bristol University Press Book Launch - Grand Strategy in 10 Words: A Guide to Great Powers in the 21st Century by Sven Biscop Room 7
  
  Speakers: Stephen Wenham (Bristol University Press), Sven Biscop (Ghent University)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  
  Roundtable / Chatham House sponsored roundtable II: Domestic Politics and Foreign Policies: Interests, Articulation, Content and Impact Webinar Room
  
  It has become conventional wisdom that domestic political interests, popular attitudes and movements are inserting themselves in new ways in foreign policy from Brazil to the EU to India to the United States. But is this process different from the past ways in which domestic interests and sentiment influenced foreign policies in the past? Is it possible that just the voices and constituencies have shifted and not the ways those have been articulated and their concrete impact on public debate over foreign policy and specific policies?
  
  Using case studies in Europe, the Americas and Asia, this roundtable will explore three key questions: 1) to what extent are domestic politics shaping foreign policy decisions? 2) to what extent is the influence of domestic politics and constituencies different then in the past? and 3) what if any change is this provoking rhetorical, symbolic and – most important – substantive changes in foreign policies? Discussion will also examine the role of transnational movements in affecting these changes.
  
  Participants will discuss the effect of populist movements and governments in India and Europe on the symbolism and content of foreign policy. Another participant will examine long-term trends in US popular sentiments toward foreign policy and attempt to trace those attitudes, their articulation and representation in specific movements and partisan factions and their impact on concrete policy initiatives across a range of issues.
  
  Chair: Dr Renata Dwan, Deputy Director Chatham House
  
  • ‘New India, New Foreign Policy?’, Dr Gareth Price, Senior Research Fellow, Chatham House;
  
  • ‘Is European Foreign Policy Populism that Different?’, Dr Angelos Chryssogelos, Associate Fellow, Chatham House;
  
  • ‘Just No-Nothings and John Birch-erism Updated? US Foreign Policy under Trump and the Hangover’, Dr Christopher Sabatini, Senior Research Fellow, Chatham House
  
  • ‘Brazil, Bullets, Beef and the Bible: Bolsonaro’s Politics Meet the World’, Elena Lazarou, Associate Fellow, Chatham House
  
  Sponsor: Conference/Management
  
  Chair: Renata Dwan (Chatham House)
  
  Participants: Angelos Chryssogelos (Chatham House/London Metropolitan University) , Renata Dwan (Chatham House) , Elena Lazarou (Chatham House) , Christopher Sabatini (Chatham House)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / Exclusion and Expansion in Global Capitalism Room 4
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Convener: IPEG Working group
  
  Chair: Juanita Elias (University of Warwick)
  
  Discussant: Lena Rethel (University of Warwick)
  - Globalization and The Rise of Populism in the West
    
    Globalization has grown much since 1980s. What political trends have been associated with this growth? Economic globalization, according to some economic theories, has adverse consequences for labor, especially less skilled labor, in the rich democracies. If these voters are the median, then we might expect political parties to respond to this by turning against globalization and the openness to flows of goods, services, people and capital that it brings. Some have hypothesized that social welfare spending can offset this negative impact of globalization. First, I ask if these pressures from globalization have been mitigated by social welfare policies or by strong left-labor coalitions, as earlier research claimed? Extending the research of Garrett {1998}, I inquire whether globalization has led to less room to maneuver in terms of welfare state policies. Second, given the negative impact of globalization on some groups, I examine whether (some) political parties have turned against economic openness? Expanding on the research of Burgoon {2009}, I ask whether political parties in the advanced industrial countries have adopted more anti-internationalist platforms as globalization has advanced. Finally, will these pressures domestically lead to worse relations with developing countries? I explore how the rise of populism in the West is affecting international politics and relations with developing countries. The evidence suggests that globalization is associated with more constraints on welfare states and with a political turn to anti-internationalism that could negatively affect relations with developing countries.
    
    Author: Helen Milner (Princeton University)
  - Capitalizing on Crisis: EBRD’s Development Operations in Jordan
    
    In 2011, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) voted to extend its mandate beyond Eastern and Central Europe (ECE) to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the first extension of its kind after EBRD began operations in Mongolia in 2006. In MENA, its investments have supported financial institutions and markets, private sector involvement, power and energy production and, most recently, infrastructure and service delivery reforms/development. While the Bank presents itself as aiding the region’s economic growth and ability to cope with added pressures of the refugee ‘crisis’, I question the deeper interests and power relations driving its investments there and the actors they benefit. I use the case of EBRD’s operations in Jordan to highlight the fundamental contradictions between their proclaimed goals and activities on the ground. I argue that EBRD’s investments in Jordan, particularly its (re)focused agenda on (public) infrastructure and services since 2014, are indicative of power relations that favor private sector interests and accumulation over local populations by expanding market/neoliberal strategies, legitimizing their rationalities and disciplining public dissent to them as local socioeconomic conditions worsen. In doing so, I understand EBRD’s expansion into MENA as an expression of neoliberal-led capitalism’s broader expansion ‘eastwards’ and its attempts to legitimize itself and its strategies in the face of compounding contradictions and rising regional (and global) dissent to it post-2007/8 financial crisis.
    
    Author: Lama Tawakkol (Queen's University)
  - New Constitutionalism and the Postcolonial Statehood - Entrenching Financialization through North-South International Cooperation Agreements
    
    After the broad criticism of structural adjustment programs and of the Washington Consensus policies in general, how can one promote neoliberal reforms and push for an investment friendly environment? This article argues that new constitutionalist mechanisms are used in international agreements between the Global North and the Global South to promote neoliberal reforms in general, and financialization in particular. Though some scholars differentiate between the impact of New Constitutionalism (NC) on more and less industrialized states, they, do not delineate the specific mechanisms at work in the context of postcolonial statehood. A systematic analysis of NC mechanisms in the context of north-south development cooperation still is missing. Likewise, this also reveals how the original NC concept is partly unfit to grasp the realities of NC mechanisms under conditions of postcolonial statehood. The article contributes to closing the gap in the literature by asking: How does New Constitutionalism work in the context of North-South relations? Are there particular new constitutionalist mechanisms that are tailored to the context of postcolonial statehood? We operationalize the NC concept by applying a structuring content analysis to Stephen Gill’s studies of NC, in order to deduce individual NC mechanisms. The resulting new constitutionalist mechanisms are applied to a development cooperation treaty between the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the Government of Ghana, the so-called MCC Ghana Power Compact. Almost 70 percent of the elaborated NC mechanism could be found in the MCC Ghana Power Compact. Beyond that, we also developed new mechanisms inductively where provisions reflected an asymmetric relationship between the Global North and the Global South. Overall, 13 new NC mechanisms were developed, of which seven can be linked to efforts of financialization. Beyond rendering visible the NC mechanisms in international agreements, this paper creates an analytical tool with which to research further the uneven (power) dynamics in international cooperation between the global North and South.
    
    Keywords: Neoliberalism, Financialization, International Development Cooperation
    
    Authors: Manuel Neumann (University of Kassel) , Nina Glatzer (University of Hamburg)*
  - Geo-economic Shift and International Development Cooperation: Structural power of emerging economies?
    
    Over the recent decade or so, the geo-economic shift in the world economy in favour of the emerging economies has attracted significant attention among academic and policy communities. For some observers, the increasing weight of rising Southern economies implies a world economy that is increasingly taking shape around the multiplicity of substantial economic centres, with implications for the international division of labour. Some observers, on the other hand, consider the narratives on the rising economies more hype than the reality on the ground that the global political economy is still dominated by the advanced economies and that foundations of the American hegemony are still intact. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion by focusing on an underexplored terrain of global economic relations: long-term finance for infrastructural and industrial projects. While financial institutions from advanced economies keep being the major source for the short-term capital inflows to the developing economies, emerging economies, most notably China, are increasingly becoming important sources for long-term capital inflows. Drawing on Susan Strange’s distinction on relational and structural power, the paper makes a two-fold argument. First, South-South networks of long-term capital are finding their place alongside the North-South networks, which makes low- and middle-income economies are less dependent on the North, thereby undermining the relational power of the latter. Second, bringing dynamics of change to the modalities and understanding of development cooperation, emerging providers of long-term finance have been instrumental in recent alterations, albeit incremental, in the practices of traditional financiers. Therefore, international development cooperation seems to witness the advent of the structural power of emerging economies.
    
    Author: Veysel Tekdal (Eskişehir Osmangazi University)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / International Relations, Securitisation and Muslim communities Room 8
  
  Sponsor: Religion and International Studies (RAIS) Working Group
  
  Conveners: Rim-Sarah Alouane (University Toulouse-Capitole) , Hisham A Hellyer (University of Cambridge )
  
  Chair: Hisham A Hellyer (University of Cambridge )
  - Salafism and the Quest for 'Common Sense'
    
    Abstract:
    Engagement with Gramscian theory within the realm of international politics has been mainly confined to the international political economy sub-discipline. More recently, however, some scholars have taken issue with this narrow focus and have called for broader engagement with Gramsci in the study of international politics. Hopf (2013), for example, has called for attention to nonmaterial ideas like religion in the study of international politics. Worth (2011) has likewise argued that Gramsci's work on religion “is neglected in contemporary global society,” suggesting that Gramsci’s rich writings on religion and the role of religion as a hegemonic agent within civil society can be useful in discussions on religion in the post-9/11 world. To this end, this paper proposes the adoption of a Gramscian lens to the study of contemporary Salafism—one that takes seriously power and politics as well as culture and religion. It conceptualizes Saudi Arabia’s propagation of Salafism, outside of its borders, as an attempt to rework the common sense of Muslims around the world and achieve a position of moral and intellectual leadership within the global Muslim community. This paper also adopts and adapts Gramscian concepts to explore how this quest for cultural hegemony has played out in different localities around the world over the years. It draws on the case of London’s Muslim community, and original ethnographic fieldwork, to demonstrate the benefits of this proposed framework—and of taking into consideration ‘religion’ in the study of international politics.
    
    Author: Iman Dawood (London School of Economics )
  - Can the Left securitize Islam? Translation of security in the French Socialist Party
    
    Abstract
    
    Both Right and centre-Left parties address Muslim radicalization as a security threat. While we have abundant literature about Right-wing anti-Islamic posture, the securitization by progressive, social-democratic and socialist parties has received less attention. To what extent does the centre-Left imitate the nativism, authoritarianism, and populism of the Radical Right? The paper contributes to securitization theories by analysing how Centre-Left parties distinctly securitize Muslims according to their partisan ideologies. When conservative and progressive parties evoke the “Muslim otherness”, they have in mind different referent objects (white and Christian Europe for the Right, secular and liberal-progressive Europe for the centre-Left). However, both political sides govern Islam through a rationality of hierarchical control. To understand how securitization travels across parties, I use the intra-linguistic version of “translation”, defined as ideological, collective, and contextual transfer of meaning. Translation modifies but does not erase the Right-Left cleavage because each party has to ideologically adjust security into its core values and to negotiate with internal audiences, who might dissent with the translation and call to de-securitize Islam.
    Although the securitarian turn of the centre-Left is visible in many Western European countries, the paper selects France as case study of translated securitization from the Radical Right (National Rally) to the centre-Left (Socialist Party). I argue that the SP (in the Government between 2012-17) has translated some Right-wing policies (removal of citizenship, state of exception) and discourses (Muslims as culturally incompatible), without translating Right-wing ethno-religious and populist semantics.
    The paper is structured as follows. The first section spells out the theoretical framework. Securitization theories have dedicated less attention to partisan ideologies, which are significant to understand how religion is uniquely translated. This holds especially true for the securitization of Islam, assembled through signifiers such as “radicalization” and “terrorism” that are highly politicized and contested. The section also clarifies the meaning and relevance of translation to grasp how securitization travels across parties.
    The second section privileges a genealogical approach to explore how securitization of Islam crept into the French SP. Genealogy discloses how the party came to consider security as a human right since the Eighties, while the anti-Islamic discourses are historically rooted in the French Left’s ideological attachment to assertive secularism.
    The third section maintains that recent critical junctures – jihadist terrorism, Mediterranean refugee crisis - explain why the Left-wing securitization resonates with a context marked by polarizing debates about Islam. In this respect, the jihadist attacks against France prompted SP President Hollande to enact two policies - the state of emergency and the removal of citizenship – that had been so far proposed by the Right. Yet, the SP has kept the emphasis on its ideological referent objects of securitization - laïcité, civic nationalism, and gender equality. The fourth section reflects on how translation of securitization has generated opposite reactions into the SP. the so-called Islamogauchism (Islamo-Leftism) as rhetorical artifact translated from Right to Left to silence the SP dissident voices and factions who protest against the Right-wing turn of the Hollande Presidency.
    
    Author: Ugo Gaudino (University of Kent)
  - Between Saudi Authenticity and American Integration: Post-Salafi Shaykhs Straddle National and International Identities
    
    ABSTRACT
    In the 1960s and 1970s, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia created a number of institutions that would serve as means of propagating the Saudi-Salafi (a.k.a., Wahhabi) vision of Sunni Islam around the world and advancing Saudi international influence. Most prominent among these were the Islamic University of Medina and a number of other foreign-student serving religious universities. Through Saudi government funding, Salafi-sympathetic students could come and study – all expenses paid – in their universities, receive basic religious preacher and pedagogical training, and then become Salafi shaykhs and missionaries (duʿāt – proclaimers) back in their home countries.
    
    This Saudi religious, soft-power policy intermingled with a change in domestic immigration policy in the United States that, after 1965, opened the U.S. up to an unprecedented influx of non-European immigrant communities, including many Muslims from abroad. Beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, dozens of African American and first- and second-generation immigrant American Muslims would join the international corps of Saudi students of knowledge going to learn authentic Islam at the heart of Islamic spiritual geography. Then, almost entirely unrelatedly, the 9/11 attacks occurred, perpetrated by al-Qaeda, an international Salafi-jihadi network, and, nearly immediately, “Salafi” and “Wahhabi” became bad labels to have draped around your neck in America.
    
    This paper follows a set of these American Saudi university graduates as they sought to navigate the complicated post-9/11 American security state and anti-Salafi sentiment in the American Muslim community. It specifically centers on a unique post-Salafi institution that was built by a clique of these Saudi-trained preachers, namely, AlMaghrib Institute, which is today one of the most popular and successful Muslim educational organizations in the United States. Founded in 2002, AlMaghrib is a technologically savvy, slickly marketed, entrepreneurial religious institute that has educated tens of thousands of American Muslims about Islam. It has served to weave a – tacitly but not explicitly – Salafi thread into the American religious tapestry and become a major player in the easy-access religious and scriptural education field in American Islam.
    
    Yet in the process of building AlMaghrib, the Saudi-educated shaykhs have encountered many moments where their loyalties and inclinations have been torn between their own education and training and the demands of the American, post-9/11 religious marketplace. For instance, in determining to not overtly call themselves or AlMaghrib “Salafi,” they have incurred the censure of many other American and international Salafis who see AlMaghrib as watering down or bastardizing real Salafism. Similarly, the AlMaghrib shaykhs frequently and logically trade upon their Saudi religious education credentials, while simultaneously departing from Saudi-Salafi norms and from the advice of their Saudi teachers when it suits their purposes.
    
    Forged at the intersection of American immigration law, post-9/11 security policy, and a decades-long Saudi international influence campaign, AlMaghrib and its shaykhs defy stereotypes of Salafism as a maladaptive, culturally predatory Saudi export. Instead they demonstrate the range of possibilities that emerge when Salafism encounters different cross-pressures, national contexts, and exploratory environments.
    
    Author: Matthew D. Taylor (Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies – Baltimore)
  - Of friends (and foes): Rethinking Salafi politics
    
    Part of a global ‘fundamentalist’ Sunni religious movement formed of scholars, preachers, and lay individuals propagated worldwide since the 1980s by Saudi-sanctioned Islamic institutions, Salafi groups are perhaps the most tangible example of how Islam and transnational Islamic actors simultaneously function across discrete geographic and social scales. Scholarship on religious transnationalism typically depicts Salafi actors as disseminating a broadly rigid, universal framework largely detached from the specificities of the national and local contexts (Roy, 2017). This paper, however, radically challenges this account. Instead, it argue that, since early 2020, the role of national and local histories and politics in variously shaping the religiosity and politics of four prominent Salafi networks across North Africa has increased I thus highlights the capacity of these local Salafi grassroots actors to pursue their own agendas and act independently from Saudi transnational religious influence and authority. Via extensive ethnographic work, and also qualitative content analysis of interviews, online sermons, social media statements, and printed and audio-visual Salafi literature, this paper thus shows that the interconnectedness of transnational Salafi actors is now being replaced by a multiplicity of increasingly disconnected and decisively autonomous trends with no unifying organisational and hierarchical ‘centre’.
    
    Author: Guy Eyre (School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  
  Roundtable / Intimate Conflicts: Queer Lives in Times of War Room 5
  
  Conflicts become perpetual realities in the lives of those displaced, exiled, racialized, minoritized, queer and trans across different borders, societies, times and spaces. From private to public, personal to political, relationship with intimacies; love, kinship, desire and death become a constant negotiation. Those who are exiled, refugees, diasporas, asylum seekers, minoritized, queer and trans live in a state of relentless struggles with the state, home, and exiles for life, survival and intimate moments in between. What are these conflicts? What do we mean by queer? How is queer embedded within the experiences of displacement and diasporas? What are these intimacies? How do minoritized individuals across different borders and boundaries experience ‘intimate conflicts’? The artists, activists and scholars on this roundtable will shares their poetry, art work, narratives and scholarships exploring these inquiries through an intimate, collective, queer and feminist conversation.
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Chair: Wazhmah Osman (Temple University,)
  
  Participants: Julio Cesar Diaz Calderon (University of Florida) , Wazina Zondon (Artist and Activist) , Jamie Hagen (Queen's University Belfast) , Louis Yako (Scholar and Poet) , Ahmad Qais Munhazim (Thomas Jefferson University) , Moshtari Hilal (Visual Artist)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / Memories and Genealogies of IR Room 6
  
  Sponsor: Historical Sociology and International Relations Working Group
  
  Conveners: Clemens Hoffmann (University of stirling) , Maia Pal (Oxford Brookes University)
  
  Chair: Maia Pal (Oxford Brookes University)
  - International Relations in Argentina: historical roots and theoretical contributions
    
    This chapter explores and analyzes the process of constitution of the International Relations field in Argentina, with a twofold objective. On the one hand, examines the origins of the field in Argentina from a historical perspective, in order to investigate its evolution and how its own historical trajectory marked the development of the field in modern times. In addition, it underlines the specific theoretical and methodological endeavors of Argentine IR in order to establish how the field managed to gain density and gradually establish its own boundaries among other disciplines. Last but not least, it intends to identify the contributions of Argentine IR field to a more universal and inclusive IR study that allows to delineate a broader-non-western IR agenda With these goals in mind, the work addresses argentine IR history through the observation and analysis of different approaches that converge in the constitution of distinctive knowledge on international affairs. Such distinctiveness is a result of the various fields from which international thought was nurtured. They are International Law, Diplomacy, Geopolitics, Political Economy and Foreign Policy Analysis. Each of them marked the constitution of the field and its process of autonomization and institutionalization. Following Bourdieu’s study on scientific fields, this work answers the question on how the field has been shaped, and how was the historical process of autonomization and internal differentiation that has allowed the discipline to legitimize itself as such in our country. From the observation and analysis of a number of components, it addressed the way its subject of study was outlined, through the contribution of agents of knowledge production and areas of specialized knowledge involved in the process. The period carved out for analysis goes from the 1889 with the First Pan-American Conference in Washington DC, which triggered intense public debate in the country on how to participate in world affairs. The period of analysis ends in 1990 when IR discipline was clearly considered an autonomous field of study. This temporal selection does not imply that the work follows a chronological and lineal path. Instead it will consider and flesh out the “strong moments” of the complex, multidimensional and never lineal process of institutionalization of a field. As a result, it identifies the different arenas of struggle, where various forces are opposed seeking internal legitimacy. Understanding these spaces as part of an internal struggle doesn’t imply a tacit confrontation but a series of dilemmas that emerge from the process of legitimizing and defining the field.
    
    Author: Melisa Deciancio
  - Remembering International Studies? Collective memory as a model and framework
    
    The field of IR has only recently discovered the concept of collective memory and has yet to fully integrate it as a framework or model for explaining either foreign policy or grand dynamics in international relations. As a cultural system, collective memory is a social fact, and it matters: through commemorative practices, rituals of remembrance, and the active work of various agents of memory, the past can be used to explain and justify the present. In times of crisis and uncertainty, the past is a salient resource to interpret the current situation, predict likely trajectories and advocate different policies and choices for the future. Closely tied to identity, collective memory in IR is commonly thought of in terms of its role in constructing, reproducing and contesting (national) political identities. In this context, it has been shown how the past can shape the course of a state’s foreign policy and diplomacy, relying on the past as an analogy or historical context.
    This panel seeks to contribute to this ongoing discussion and broaden it by addressing the following questions: how can IR contribute to the continuously evolving field of memory studies? how can collective memory be used as a concept that goes beyond foreign policy and explain international phenomena such as state sovereignty, international security, human security, and trauma? In light of globalization processes, how can collective memory serve to better understand nationalism and global politics? How does the past relate to notions of power, practices and politics in the international arena? Is the past a resource or a burden?
    
    Authors: Mor Mitrani (Bar Ilan University) , Tracy Adams (Bar Ilan University)
  - Who We Are, By Way of Who We Are Not: Identity Search and Match in World Politics
    
    The modern international system produces a series of identity categories such as 'democracy vs authoritarian', 'developed vs developing', 'East or West', 'religious vs secular', 'civilised vs barbaric'. Modern states that had undergone cycles of power rise and decline often found themselves in a situation of re-categorising their national identity in accordance with these categories. How has the buoyant of hierarchical identity categories affected state identity (trans)formation in modern world politics? This article offers a theoretical model to explain the mechanisms and consequences of identity transformations in the context of global hierarchical shifts. Drawing on search theory in microeconomics, We argue that identity transformation takes the form of search and match between state actors and the existing identity categories that define the global hierarchy. Contrary to the conventional understanding which contends that identity formation is a process of learning 'who we are', we argue that some states learn about 'who we are' by way of 'who we are not'. Our model supplements the existing theories of state identity formation as it 1) serves as a corrective to the explanations which focus on the sociolinguistic significance in identity making; 2) offers a more rigorous account for the identity politics in the empirical world such as modern Japan's identity dilemma, Hong Kong's struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, and Turkey's identity issues regarding religion and secularism.
    
    Authors: Ce Liang (University of Cambridge) , Andrew Li (Central European University )*
  - Collective Memory in International Relations
    
    Countries have collective memories of war, conflict and suffering. However, where precisely does the collective memory of a country take shape, and then, how does it impact state behaviour over time? In seeking answers to these questions, this paper introduces the interdisciplinary concept of collective memory into the academic field of International Relations (IR). It first outlines a novel 'international politics of memory' framework which locates the origins of a country's memory in political strategies within the international environment. With the illustrative help of mini-case studies on the emergence of diverse WWII memories, it shows that memory begins for a country as an international political effort to achieve 'status' within the community of states. However, once a country's memory has formed internationally, memory then also starts to channel international state behaviour. To show this, the constructivist identity-behaviour nexus proposed by Ontological Security scholars requires amendment through the formulation of a novel 'temporal security' approach. It proposes that countries follow their collective memory, that is, their narrated 'self', in world politics. In combining new theoretical moves with empirical cases, this talk not only shows that collective memory has an influence on political outcomes but also how and why memory matters for IR.
    
    Author: Kathrin Bachleitner (University of Oxford)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  
  Roundtable / Security studies and/of climate geoengineering Room 2
  
  While direct global interventions to deal with global warming ('climate geoengineering') is sometimes claimed to be able to help ameliorate risks associated with global temperature rise, on the other hand, the physical and political side effects of geoengineering techniques, uncertainties surrounding their viability, and the political context in which deployment might take place might all generate novel security dilemmas. So far, the historical involvement of military actors in weather modification has not been openly replicated in interests in climate geoengineering techniques (such as stratospheric aerosol injection or marine cloud brightening). But how reasonable is it to anticipate security concerns or military interest regarding the regional or local impacts of such techniques, and military involvement in (and surveillance implications of) delivery mechanisms (stratospheric flights, robot vessels etc), amongst other things is still unclear. This round table provides an opportunity to consider whether and how security dynamics and practices might interact with climate geoengineering. Questions include: How might climate geoengineering constitute new forms of 'security'? Could security concerns arise over aspects of planetary scale ‘carbon geoengineering’ (or Negative Emissions Techniques)? Which geo-political and security interests might be served by or are already investigating climate geoengineering and why? What security justifications might be deployed for climate geoengineering? What new interests emerge in the securitization of climate geoengineering? How might such shifts interact with climate justice concerns and drivers?
  
  Sponsor: Environment Working Group
  
  Chair: Duncan McLaren (University of Lancaster)
  
  Participants: Olaf Corry (University of Leeds) , Jennie Stephens (Northeastern University) , Rita Floyd (University of Birmingham) , Kevin Surprise (Mount Holyoke College)
- 16:00 → 17:30
  Panel / “The China-Factor: Sino-British Relations and the Conundrum of Economic and Security Interests” Room 3
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Convener: Zeno Leoni (King's College London)
  
  Chair: Zeno Leoni (King's College London)
  
  Discussant: Astrid Nordin (Lancaster University)
  - When investments became a security threat in the UK: an analysis of the debate on Chinese foreign direct investments
    
    In recent years, an increasing number of countries have begun to consider foreign direct investments (FDI) originating from China as a matter of national security. To a certain degree, the UK has been following this trend; from the mid-2010s, it has committed to strengthening the government’s ability to discretionally restrict and block the inflow of potentially security-harming investments into the country. FDI are an inherently economic tool and in the UK has only recently assumed security implications. The timing and nature of the securitizing process clearly suggest that the growth of China-originated investments played a fundamental role in triggering and shaping the process as well as broader European (and global) move in such a direction. However, the reasons behind the securitization of FDI have received very marginal and limited analysis. Rooted in the theory of securitization of non-traditional security issues (NTS), this article seeks to explain the reasons behind the recent securitization of investments in the UK and spell out its relations with the Chinese origin of such investments.
    
    Author: Francesca Ghiretti (War Studies Department - King's College London)
  - British engagement with China in the age of capitalisation and financialisation
    
    This paper employs investigative research methods to re-examine Sino-British engagement in the 2010s. This reassessment offers a critical investigation of the so-called “golden age”. This paper is taken from a thesis made up of three case studies exploring the period. For brevity, this presentation covers only one of the three: PRC involvement in the UK civil nuclear sector. A shadow IR approach uncovers extensive new evidence that demonstrates the division within the British establishment between financial and security experts over PRC engagement. The paper reasons that commercial entities have taken an increasingly prominent role in UK foreign policy generation via elite linkages and the “revolving door” phenomenon. This development has reshaped British priorities in the global arena in general, as well as UK-China engagement in particular. What is revealed is a complex Sino-British engagement landscape where commercial entities are able to assume prominent gatekeeper roles. This finding calls into question not only our understanding of the UK’s China policy, but also Cartesian assumptions of international relations such as unit division by territory, sovereignty, and identity.
    
    Author: Martin Thorley (University of Nottingham)
  - The Search for a New Policy for China, 1922-1929
    
    Over the past decade debates have grappled with the inherent dilemma that is the economic-security contradiction within the UK-Chinese relationship. This contemporary debate, at present, has been divorced from a parallel historical debate about the origins of this conundrum for British policymakers, and watershed moment in this regard, in the 1920s. Utilising archival research this paper represents a modest effort to redress that divide. To this end, this paper will explore how policymakers addressed the “Problem of China” in the wake of 1922 Washington Conference. With the events of Versailles, the May Fourth protests, the shortcomings of Washington at dealing with China itself; it was clear that British policymakers had to find a way to reconcile a burgeoning, crucially modern, Chinese nationalist movement. Gunboat diplomacy had had its day and European balance of power struggles in the “Chinese arena” were no longer sustainable. Policymakers had to confront, for the first time, the necessity of crafting a policy that was truly aimed at China. What emerges from this analysis is the difficulty of designing a policy that balanced realpolitik considerations, imperial retrenchment and overstretch, vast British commercial interests in China, an ailing China trade and a very vocal British community in China.
    
    Author: Oliver Yule-Smith (Department of War Studies - King's College London)
  - The end of the ‘golden era’: contextualising Britain’s China policy conceptually and historically
    
    The end of the ‘golden era’: contextualising Britain’s China policy conceptually and historically
    
    Author: Zeno Leoni (King's College London)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Roundtable / Becoming Fluent in Fieldwork: (Un)learning What Is Good/Ethical/Responsible Fieldwork Room 6
  This roundtable looks to disrupt the conventional understanding of doing good, ethical and responsible fieldwork (Sidaway 2000; Jazeel & McFarlane 2007; Mason, Brown & Pickerill 2012). We propose a conversation about the ongoingness of doing fieldwork and the politics of imagining different worlds that this entails. By foregrounding the processual nature of becoming fluent – rather than fluency – the roundtable engages with recent developments in international relations that conceptualise fieldwork as interpretive and always in flux in messy and processual ways (Eliasoph 2005; Carabelli and Deiana 2019; Kušić and Zahora 2020). Building on and further developing these interventions, the participants discuss two focal questions:
  
  Given the proposed processual nature of fieldwork, how do we develop and maintain fieldwork fluency, understood as a continuous praxis of fieldwork?
  
  How does becoming fluent shape our understanding of what good/ethical/responsible fieldwork is, and what are the different ways of negotiating this in our respective fields?
  
  Becoming fluent in fieldwork entails developing reflexive expertise: a process of continuous (un)learning, figuring out, of negotiating and relating – a balancing act between the planned and the unplanned (Cerwonka & Malkki 2007). This process entails negotiating and making decisions about what is good/ethical/responsible research, and how to navigate tensions between possible definitions (Ackerly & True 2008; Adedi Dunia et al. 2019). As we approach fieldwork as a continuous process in which we constantly work at our praxis, the roundtable critically interrogates how we (un)learn together with our research participants, beyond conventional understandings of ethics in field research (Torre et al. 2018; Nagar 2014).
  
  In sharing their journeys of becoming fluent in the field, the participants present reflexive and ongoing engagements with fieldwork as a continuous process that contributes to our understanding of academic, individual and collective efforts to negotiate research ethics, practices of care and fieldwork praxis.
  
  References
  
  Ackerly, Brooke, and Jacqui True. 2008. “Reflexivity in Practice: Power and Ethics in Feminist Research on International Relations.” International Studies Review, 10 (4), 693-707.
  Adedi Dunia, Oscar et al. 2019. “Moving Out of the Backstage: How Can We Decolonize Research.” The Disorder of Things, 22 Oct. 2019, https://thedisorderofthings.com/2019/10/22/moving-out-of-the-backstage-how-can-we-decolonize-research/#_ednref3.
  Carabelli, Giulia, and Maria Adriana Deiana. 2019. “Researching in Proximity to War. A Love Story.” Journal of Narrative Politics 5 (2): 91-101.
  Cerwonka, Allaine, and Liisa H. Malkki. 2008. Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  Eliasoph, Nina. 2005. “Theorizing from the Neck Down: Why Social Research Must Understand Bodies Acting in Real Space and Time (and Why It’s So Hard to Spell Out What We Learn from This.” Qualitative Sociology 28 (2): 159-169.
  Jazeel, Tariq and Colin McFarlane. 2007. Responsible Learning: Cultures of Knowledge Production and the North-South Divide. Antipode, 39, 781-789.
  Kušić, Katarina, and Jakub Záhora, eds. 2020. Living and Knowing in the Field (of IR), E-IR.
  Mason, Kelvin, Gavin Brown and Jenny Pickerill. 2012. Epistemologies of Participation, or, What Do Critical Human Geographers Know That’s of Any Use? Antipode, 42 (2), 252-255.
  Nagar, Richa. 2014. Muddying the Waters: Coauthoring Feminisms Across Scholarship and Activism. Urbana, Chicago, Springfield: University of Illinois Press.
  Sidaway, James. 2000. Recontextualising Positionality: Geographical Research and Academic Fields of Power. Antipode, 32 (3), 260-270.
  Torre, M. E, Stoudt, B. G., Manoff, E. and M. Fine. 2018. “Critical Participatory Action Research on State Violence: Bearing Wit(h)ness across Fault Lines of Power, Privilege and Dispossession,” in The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (5th edition), edited by N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln, 492-515. California: Sage Publications.
  Sponsor: Interpretivism in International Relations Working Group
  
  Chair: Cai Wilkinson (Deakin University)
  
  Participants: Maria Adriana Deiana (Queen’s University Belfast) , Elena Stavrevska (London School of Economics and Political Science) , Suzanne Klein Schaarsberg (Aberystwyth University) , Wen-Yu Wu (University of Birmingham) , Omer Aijazi (Brunel University London, University of Toronto) , Gemma Bird (University of Liverpool)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Roundtable / Critical friendship or critical distance: Engaging with the military in research Room 2
  Critical military studies engages in a sceptical curiosity about military power but where does the proximity of researcher and researched figure in this relationship. This roundtable reflects on the boundary between the military and academia through the different experiences of interactions either as veteran researchers, through professional military education or as long term but more distant observers. The roundtable will consider the following questions:
  
  Can one be too close to be critical?
  
  How does critical friendship inform knowledge production?
  
  What is lost by not engaging in direct dialogue with the military?
  
  Is the military open to hearing critical academic voices and where does the veteran voice fit in this?
  Sponsor: War Studies Working Group
  
  Chair: Benjamin Kienzle (King's College London)
  
  Participants: Sophy Antrobus (Freeman Air and Space Institute, Kings College London) , Ross McGarry (Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Liverpool) , Hannah West (University of Bath) , Aiko Holvikivi (Department of Gender Studies, London School of Economics)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Panel / Ethics and World Politics Room 3
  
  Sponsor: Ethics and World Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: EWPG Working group
  
  Chair: Robin Dunford (University of Brighton)
  - The Ethics of the Executed: What "Last Letters" Can Teach Us About Just War
    
    This paper explores the last letters written by French civilians who were executed during the Nazi occupation of France during WWII. The letters were written by people from various layers of society - young and old, communists and Catholics, educated and blue collar, members the resistance and those caught up in the throes of history. Together, they tell us about the mindset of those who lived through the war, what mattered to them and why. The letters are a window into a cataclysmic moment of existential threat, caused by the onslaught of fascism, that these individuals and their families were living trough. By coming to grips with what the letters say and do not say, we are exposed to the different ideologies the executed reveal in their final thoughts, but also to how these views shape the collective nature of war, war as a lived experience, and war as tunnel to some unknown future. The paper seeks to bring these letters into conversation with just war scholarship, specifically the now well-trodden debates between so-called traditionalists and revisionists, to shed new light on where ethics come from and how individual ethics and collective morals are intertwined.
    
    Author: Daniel Brunstetter (UC Irvine)
  - Justice in International Trade: Re-Envisioning What It Asks Of Us
    
    It has become commonplace to conceptualize justice in the context of international trade primarily in terms of equality of treatment in the application of common rules, reciprocity and equal obligations, parity of participation, and/or distribution. I take issue with this equivalence. Such equivalence is particularly problematic from the perspective of small developing states. Vulnerabilities associated with size, location and governance capacity circumscribe the way in which these states can participate: They are not equal players – they are different.
    In this conceptual paper, a critical re-conceptualization of justice that takes account of difference is explored. Iris Marion Young’s framework, which focuses on the achievement of social justice in a domestic context by acknowledging social differences such as those based on race and gender, is adopted and its relevance argued in the international context of interstate (trade) negotiation so as to validate the notion of (size, location, and governance capacity) difference in this latter context. The point of departure is that while states are typically treated as equals in international law – as are individuals in liberal political theory – there are significant differences between states which warrant different treatment in the context of international (trade) rule-making.
    In so doing, I offer a critical re-conceptualization of justice in international trade that encompasses global economic governance processes which allow for the development of state capacities for autonomous decision-making, and which involve inclusive democratic processes that acknowledge differences between states and the significance of such differences in the context of international trade.
    
    Author: LISA SAMUEL (NEW YORK UNIVERSITY)
  - The practice of international ethics: experimentation, evolution and experientialism
    
    Ideal principles of global justice, or what Michael Goodhart calls ideal moral theory (IMT) positions itself as uncontaminated by context, thus putting action and knowledge, politics and morality in separate realms. This presupposes the neutrality of the researcher as an ultimate expert discovering moral truths, putting action and practice in an inferior realm. This approach still prevails in international political theory (IPT), preventing theorists and practitioners from understanding inherently experiential side of international ethics, the normative practice and experience of the international. Drawing on pragmatist arguments, particularly those by John Dewey, the paper explores an alternative take of the practice of international ethics, based on the logic of experimentation. This logic is based on (1) evolutionary and non-linear change, (2) epistemic and ontological uncertainty, (3) change-orientation, (4) situationism and (5) new knowledge creation as its core premises. The paper reconsiders international normative practices, particularly that of responsibility in international institutions and NGOs, as fields where agency of practitioners is fully acknowledged as a subversive epistemic force, creating their own ethicality through social and political practices. Researcher, then, is removed from epistemologically privileged position of a normative knowledge producer, recognising the validity of normative knowledge developed through everyday international practices.
    
    Author: Marija Antanaviciute (Queen Mary University of London)
  - Politics of hospitality in the National Health Service: immigration enforcement through the provision of healthcare in England.
    
    Healthcare provision by the NHS has been framed in terms of hospitality: the service is portrayed as the home where healthcare staff should provide a welcoming reception of patients. In this view, hospitality articulates a normative commitment to humanity and a sense of universal care on the basis of equal human worth. However, healthcare for migrants challenges hospitality as a simply benevolent act of welcoming which seeks to cure bodies and alleviate suffering. Data-sharing policies enable the NHS to transfer migrant patients’ non-clinical data to the Home Office for purposes of enforcing immigration and controlling borders. In this context, healthcare as hospitality allows for a welcoming reception of migrants into the service, but also for hostility to be enacted towards them. By articulating Derrida’s notion of hospitality with Foucault’s analytics of power, this paper analyses the government of migration through health services delivered by the NHS. It focuses attention on the case of ‘illegal’ immigrants in England in order to explore how techniques of care, exclusion, surveillance and control operate to produce migrant bodies both as patients in need of medicine and risky subjects who threaten the possibility of security.
    
    Author: Moises Vieira (University of Manchester)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Panel / Foreign events through the lens of Russian media Room 5
  
  Sponsor: Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group
  
  Convener: Lana Bilalova
  
  Chair: Precious Chatterje-Doody (Open University)
  - Title: Warfare Agenda-Setting on Russian Television, 2009 - 2019
    
    How does an autocracy use its domestic mass media in diversionary war making? Because of the empirical challenges, earlier studies have provided only an inconclusive answer to this question. This article offers the first large scale evidence of an extensive attempt to influence the importance of foreign conflict in the eyes of domestic audience. I argue that when the mass media is state-controlled and trusted by the population, the regime may use warfare news to implement strategies of agenda-setting and distraction. This argument is tested using semi-supervised Naive Bayes - based geographical classification of 2.4 million news stories transmitted in Russia in 2009 - 2019. Using the state-enforced change of management in a media outlet to instrument for the regime’s control, I demonstrate that national television, the most popular and trusted news source in the country, on average reported 55% more stories about international conflicts then other, relatively free media.
    
    Author: Lana Bilalova
  - Title: Forget International Reporting? When war reporting isn’t reporting but sourcing
    
    It’s time to move past the assumed totality of ‘international’ war reporting as a global, rather than asymmetrical and translocal, field of journalistic practice. This paper outlines the methodological promiscuousness necessary to follow how international agency coverage –from AFP, AP, ITAR-TASS, Reuters, and RIA NOVOSTI– is characterized by patterns of conventionalized dependencies when on-the-ground reporting is obstructed by conflict, from citizen journalists to state and non-state sources, already circulating reporting and social media posts. A large-scale digital humanities approach mapping newswire metadata was developed to identify diverse case studies to highlight the changing conventions and genres of war reporting. This paper examines how applying a practice-based lens to critical discourse analysis provides the methodological flexibility for in-depth analysis and comparison across genres, from retrospective personal blogs of agency photojournalists to comparisons of ‘objective’ newswire bulletins in the first 24hrs of chemical weapons attacks, highlighting the limitations and stressors of international war reporting.
    
    Author: Kenzie Burchell (University of Toronto)
  - RT’s International Coverage of the Pandemic and its Reception and Circulation on New Media Platforms
    
    The article analyses RT (formerly, Russia Today)’s English language coverage of the pandemic across different stages of the crisis development and compares it with the network’s reporting on other political and entertainment-focused global media events across different media platforms. I discuss features of the Russian state-sponsored network’s coverage of the global crisis and, based on the examined case studies, challenge the common perception of the network purely as a source of Russia-backed misinformation and propaganda. I conclude that although the coverage is Western-centric, its content is popular chiefly among fringe or even controversial groups and individuals in the West, while it is clearly accepted as mainstream by online users based outside the West. While its impact and role in spreading Russia-backed misinformation internationally is seriously questionable, the network does find its niche in the global, hybrid media environment.
    
    Author: Vitaly Kazakov (University of Manchester)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  
  Roundtable / Is ‘Critical Security Studies’ relevant to meeting the security challenges of the coming decade? Room 4
  
  In many ways, the global coronavirus pandemic typifies the security challenges states are likely to face over the coming decade. The harms and instabilities likely to emerge from ecological crisis, global health challenges, mass migrations, global poverty, cyber insecurity and political instability will likely be transnational and planetary in nature, and escape more ‘traditional’, state-centric, militarised security paradigms.
  
  From this analysis, it would seem that ‘critical security studies’ has a lot to contribute when it comes to responding to these challenges. Critical approaches are premised on denaturalising the state as the sole referent of security and have challenged the way liberal democracies have privileged the use of force and militarism to produce security.
  
  Yet, while critical approaches to security have come to dominate some parts of the academy, it is not always clear what their impact on security policy has been. To assess the relevance of the insights of critical security studies to contemporary security challenges, and with a view to ensuring they do not remain consigned to the ivory tower, this roundtable brings together academics, policymaking and NGO communities to ask three key questions:
  
  • To what extent have critical security concepts, theories or frameworks already influenced or been adopted by security policy circles?
  • In what ways might critical security studies reshape policy debates when confronting the security challenges of the next decade?
  • How can academics best engage in informing and producing alternative conceptions of security policy?
  
  Sponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working Group
  
  Chair: Thomas Martin (Open University)
  
  Participants: Michael Clarke (King's College London and former Director General of RUSI) , Nick Ritchie (University of York) , Abigail Watson (Saferworld) , Victoria Basham (Cardiff University) , Camilla Molyneux (All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drones) , Marissa Conway (Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy/University of Bristol)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Panel / Perspectives on Peacebuilding Room 1
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: PKPBG Working group
  
  Chair: Lenneke Sprik (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
  - Soundscapes of Mostar: Space and art beyond the divided city
    
    The existing literature that pertains to the ‘spatial turn’ in peace research has primarily highlighted the materiality and visuality of the spaces in which peace takes place. However, its sonic dimensions are under-acknowledged, with existing accounts largely referring to the visual characteristics of space. This paper attends to this gap by investigating how a sonic approach to peace helps conceptualise transformative spatial politics. Emphasising spatial continuities which challenge binaries of the past and present, we examine the ways that the sonic qualities of post-war spaces give insight into the nature, quality, and experience of peace in an otherwise divided urban context. Drawing on a sound story from a larger sound archive established as part of our research project on “The art of peace”, we therefore analyse the ways in which ‘peace’ plays out sonically in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The investigation of the space of the Partisan’s Cemetery through the sound archive, a guided walk and interview data trace the fictional spatial transformation of a divided city. Emphasising the spatiality of memory and placemaking, our micro-site of analysis challenges us to engage with sonic dis/continuities of war and peace. We posit that the curated soundscape of Mostar disrupts visual representations of space as divided and presents alternative spatial imaginations, inspired by fragments of the past, present and future.
    
    Authors: Lydia Cole (University of Durham) , Stefanie Kappler (Durham University)
  - Entangling detachments: ‘Affinitive peacebuilding’ in the Women’s League of Burma
    
    The Women’s League of Burma (WLB) testifies to how one of the longest armed conflicts in the world is fostering a culture of continued and escalating violence, in which life takes place among predominantly armed men, in a climate where the military continues its crimes with impunity. In this, villagers are forcibly recruited as labourers and rape goes unreported. Meanwhile, existing research on peacebuilding in and around Myanmar either targets the conflict dynamics as such or takes the failures and successes of the official peace process as its point of departure as opposed to scrutinizing their foundational ordering structures. This paper traces the drivers of both conflict and the official peace process to colonial structures that enforce separation by making ‘ethnic division’ their core organising principle. Against this, it explores how ‘affinitive peacebuilding’ in the WLB connects women across these separations. The paper builds on theatrical performance, documentary films and the social movement literature to conceptualize women’s peacebuilding as a product of the affinity ties that these connections produce, apart from structures of coloniality, conflict and the official peace process. It explores the implications of centering these women’s experiences while decentering the official peace process.
    
    Author: Anna-Karin Eriksson (Linnaeus University)
  - Intersecting identities and women activism for peace in the post-Yugoslav area
    
    The recent integration of gender-based issues within peace building literature has revealed the critical need for peace processes to include women and the potential negative effects of their absence. Women, however, are mostly presented as a homogeneous group that promotes a same and unified idea of peace. Yet, women constitute a large and heterogeneous category, with different ethnicities, religions, classes, ages, races, etc. Those intersecting identities influence how they experience conflicts, the way they envision peace, but also their ability to mobilize. Based on interviews with women activists from the six entities that emerged from the disintegration of the Yugoslav space, I discuss the role of women’s intersecting identities in the personal trajectories of mobilization they develop. The paper reveals the power structures based on which processes of inclusion and exclusion operate. As such, it provides new insights on the construction of peace by local actors. Particularly, what kind peace is promoted and by whom.
    
    Author: Emilie Fort (Durham University)
- 18:00 → 19:30
  Panel / The State of War: From the Strategic to the Tactical Room 7
  
  Sponsor: War Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: James Rogers (University of Southern Denmark)
  
  Chair: James Rogers (University of Southern Denmark)
  - Rebel Group Capabilities and Suicide Attacks in Civil Wars
    
    Civil wars and suicide terrorism has long been treated in separation, yet, in light of recent studies we know that, some insurgency groups also resort to suicide terrorism along with their conventional guerilla warfare. However, up to date there are few studies that explain why there is a variation among rebel groups when choosing to use suicide attacks as a tactic. By using Harvey Starr’s (1991) concepts of “willingness” and “opportunity” we argue that choosing suicide terrorism as a tactical choice depends on rebel groups’ accumulated grievances and the opportunity structures that gives them the ability to absorb audience costs. Consistent with our expectations data on all rebel groups in civil war from 1981 to 2011, shows that while democratic institutions, existence of political wing as well as support from international states are associated with lower levels of suicide bombings; recruitment potential, diaspora funding increases the number of suicide attacks.
    
    Authors: Sinem Arslan (University of Essex ) , Milos Popovic (Leiden University )*
  - Simulation, hyperbole, hypocrisy: Soldiers’ negotiations of remote warfare in Iraq
    
    Simulation, hyperbole, hypocrisy: Soldiers’ negotiations of remote warfare in Iraq
    
    After the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 00s, Western warfare has increasingly shifted from a ‘boots on the ground’ to a ‘remote warfare approach’. This approach for instance involves local train, advice and assist missions carried out within the safety of military bases, or air- and drone strikes carried out from afar. While such practices of remote warfare are deemed less costly and more politically palatable by Western policy-makers, this article suggests that remote warfare creates a range of tensions between soldiers´ professional training and imaginings of war and their experiences when deployed. The article therefore asks how soldiers’ negotiate these tensions; drawing in part on the authors’ own field observations and interviews from Operation Inherent Resolve and the NATO Mission in Iraq. Theoretically, the article uses key insights from poststructuralism and practice theory, and proposes three analytical concepts to study these negotiations, 1) simulating war e.g. war gaming, music, and intense physical exercise, 2) hyperbole, e.g. exaggeration or intensification of dangerous and violent experiences, and 3) hypocrisy of language and ambiguities of domination e.g. the simultaneous articulations of Iraqis as equal partners, subordinates and threats. We find that such forms of negotiations lead to a (re)production of sites of war (such as Iraq) as barren, distant, and in perpetual conflict, prompting indifference and little deliberation about the burdens of war in Western publics, as well as with the deployed soldiers themselves.
    
    Authors: Helle Malmvig (DIIS, Senior Researcher) , Jakob Dreyer (University of Copenhagen)
  - Inking Wartime: Military Tattoos and the Temporalities of the War Experience
    
    IR scholars recently emphasised the importance of bodies to war and its study. Another recent research avenue in the discipline has parallelly focused on time and temporality, stressing their centrality to both political practice and theory. Bringing these two trends into dialogue, this paper centres specific bodies – tattooed war veterans – as sources for the study of war experiences. In particular, I argue that through their inked bodies, veterans relate a different notion of wartime, one in which war’s temporal boundedness is not assumed. After providing the rationale for the use of tattoos as sources for the study of war experiences, I first survey four different online archives of military tattoos. While replete with temporal references, these tattoos do not relate war endings, instead hinting at war as an “unfinished business”. Second, I theorise tattoos as timing indexicals, thereby making sense of both (a) the absence of temporal boundaries in veteran’s storylines; and (b) the mobilisation of these same tattoos and tattooed bodies in overlapping and conflicting collective narratives. I call these, respectively, the “chronic” and “chronological” functions of tattoos. Lastly, I contrast inked veterans’ unfinished wartime with vernacular understandings of the same concept. The tension between these two, I suggest, is not only empirically relevant, but also analytically crucial to how we think about war experiences.
    
    Author: Mirko Palestrino (Queen Mary University of London)
  - Fashionable concepts in the field of Strategic Studies
    
    The field of Strategic Studies regularly produces what can be called fashionable concepts – concepts that experience a sudden burst in popularity, are then widely featured in academic, think tank and/or policy papers, therefore soon become broad and vague, but are bestowed with authority and power through which they shape what research gets published or funded. Past and present examples include ‘hybrid warfare’, ‘counter-insurgency’, and ‘revolution in military affairs’. Why does the field of Strategic Studies see such a frequent change of powerful, fashionable concepts? While fashions are found in all fields and disciplines, this paper argues that the origins and dynamics of Strategic Studies specifically favour conceptual innovation, from which spring conceptual fashions. These fashions are not all bad, but analysed together show serious flaws in our understanding of war. The paper first introduces the phenomenon of fashionable concepts. It then discusses the field’s characteristics that have led to conceptual fashions, such as the strong influence of US strategic and intellectual culture; a close interconnectedness between scholars and practitioners; and a lack of engagement with questions of ontology and epistemology. Finally, it addresses the effects of such fashions on the field, touching upon questions of progress of the field.
    
    Key words: strategic studies; intellectual history; fashion; sociology of knowledge; hybrid warfare.
    
    Author: Chiara Libiseller (King's College London)

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