91福利

Dr Patrick Meehan works in Global Sustainable Development in the School of Cross-Faculty Studies at the 91福利, and he is also a post-doctorate research fellow in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS. In this seminar, Dr Meehan provides insights into the political economy of the illegal drug trade in Myanmar based on extensive fieldwork conducted as Co-Investigator of a five-year research programme (2017-2022) led by SOAS University of London entitled 'Drugs and (dis)order: Building sustainable peacetime economies in the aftermath of war鈥�. This seminar explores how Myanmar鈥檚 flourishing drug economy is not only rooted in the country鈥檚 longstanding armed conflict, but is also central to processes of rapid political, economic, and social change that have re-shaped Myanmar鈥檚 borderlands since the 1990s. Through exploring issues of cultivation, trafficking, and rising local drug use, Dr Meehan reveals how drugs have become embedded in the DNA of the Myanmar state and the development processes through which Myanmar鈥檚 resource-rich borderlands have been integrated into the global economy. 

Date: 27th October 2022 

Time: 16:15-17:30 

Venue: MS.05, Zeeman Building 

This seminar is part of the East Asia Study Group (EASG) Seminar Series. For further information please contact the EASG at easg@warwick.ac.uk.

My name is Holly Rodgers. I am currently a First Year PhD Student in the PAIS department at the 91福利. Between 10th and 20th September 2022 I visited the University of Montreal in Canada for a graduate exchange as part of the Jean Monnet Network 鈥淏etween the EU and Russia鈥� (BEAR) to work with Prof. Magdalena Dembinska. This visit built on my recently submitted MA thesis 鈥淭he Puzzling Foreign Policy Behaviour of Poland towards Belarus鈥� and was facilitated by my MA dissertation supervisor at PAIS, Prof. Maria Koinova, as an excellent fit with the thematic discussions within the BEAR network of which 91福利 is part. In turn, my visit to Canada was aimed to enhance the development of my Ph.D thesis, focusing on memory, identity and nostalgic discourse in post-Soviet EU member states.

Located at the EU Jean Monnet Centre in Montreal, I had the opportunity to meet and network with other Ph.D. students also researching the EU, and other doctoral candidates at their Graduate Center, whose topics were thematically close to mine. I met also academic faculty whose willingness was incredible to discuss my research plan, theoretical focus, and operationalisation of difficult concepts such as identity. Their feedback during individual conversations was superb. In that short time span, I was given my own office to work in, and an opportunity to present my research plans to a larger academic audience. The seminar set was a perfect opportunity for me to practice presentation skills in a friendly environment and to get useful feedback on aspects of my early research – conceptual and methodological – that need finetuning. This was an excellent experience for me to justify my Ph.D. project in the ways it has been designed, and to build my skills for the forthcoming First Year Review at PAIS, and ultimately for the viva.

This visit to the University of Montreal will be invaluable for my further Ph.D. studies. Not only did it offer a new perspective, but the feedback and expertise academics shared with me have given me plenty of food for thought about my research plans. I feel that my Ph.D. project has evolved because of this visit. Short but clearly fruitful 10 days in Montreal, full of 1:1 meetings, a seminar, and informal conversations with colleagues seem like a condensed indicator of what is to come on my PhD journey – and for that I am incredibly grateful.

, Vicki Squire discusses how research from the Data and Displacement project points to a disconnect between international humanitarian standards and practices on the ground, highlights the need to revisit existing ethical guidelines such informed consent, and signals the importance of investing in data literacies.

The Data and Displacement project (PI: Vicki Squire) launched its final project report at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on 12 September. The findings reveal that, as new ways to collect data continue to grow, humanitarian actors need to improve ethical and operational data practices for internally displaced persons (IDPs).

The AHRC and FCDO-funded team of researchers for the Data and Displacement project come from the Universities of 91福利, Ibadan, Juba and Glasgow, and from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Over two years, the team of experts conducted 174 in-depth interviews with a range of stakeholders, including international data experts, donors, and humanitarian practitioners, as well as regional humanitarian actors and IDPs living in camps in north-eastern Nigeria and South Sudan.

You can read the report here.

PAIS PhD candidate Mauricio Palma-Guti茅rrez and PAIS's Tom Long have co-authored a new article. The piece has been published by Revista Desaf铆os as part of a forthcoming special issue on new trends in the study of Colombian foreign policy. The Spanish-language article, "Pol铆tica exterior colombiana y performatividad: 驴Un 'buen miembro' del Orden Internacional Liberal?" examines how Colombia's performances striving to be seen as a "good member" of liberal international order help co-constitute and legitimate that order. Palma-Guti茅rrez and Long illustrate these performances in two cases: the treatment of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia and the participation of Colombia in the prohibitionist "war on drugs."

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