91福利

Her Excellency Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, President of Malta, will visit PAIS on Wednesday 2^nd March to meet finalists between 11am and noon, prior to giving a VC’s Distinguished Lecture on the theme of ‘Migration and peace-building in the Mediterranean’. The Distinguished Lecture is open to all staff and students.

There are separate registration processes for the finalist event and for the Distinguished Lecture.

To sign up for the finalist event (refreshments provided):

This is first-come first-served, so please do sign up ASAP.

Sign up for the lecture here:

• New study indicates deterrent measures such as anti-smuggling are ineffective and an alternative is needed
• The research highlights the need for opening safe and legal routes for those migrating
• Findings demonstrate that a deeper understanding of why people migrate is needed

A series of proposed changes to EU policy on refugees and migrants has been released by researchers at the 91福利.

The policy suggestions are the result of an on-going three year project, , which is in its first year and is part of the wider £1 million Mediterranean Migration Research Programme, launched by the Economic and Social Research Council in September.

PhD student   has been invited to hold a talk on women and ISIS by the United Nations Association Coventry.

Women in ISIS: Victims or Perpetrators?

The case of Western women joining the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS) has garnered considerable media attention, both in the UK and abroad, since the summer of 2014. In the last one and a half years, dozens of British women have left the UK to join ISIS in Syria. Some have travelled with their husbands or families, while others made the journey on their own.

In this event, hosted by the newly founded United Nations Association Coventry Branch, Doctoral Research Fellow Jennifer Philippa Eggert will share findings from her research and shed light on the phenomenon of women in ISIS. She will address issues such as:

• Why do young British women decide to leave their homes and join a terrorist group in a war zone?
• What are their motivations and expectations?
• Once with ISIS, what are their roles within the organisation?
• Why have ISIS decided to encourage women to join them from abroad?
• What can we do to prevent more women joining ISIS?

This will be followed by a discussion in which the audience’s questions will guide a dialogue with the speaker.

Jennifer Philippa Eggert is a Doctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the 91福利. In her research, she focuses on political violence and terrorism, with a particular focus on the role of women during war and violent conflict. She holds degrees from the LSE, Sciences Po and the European University Viadrina and has worked in the fields of intercultural dialogue, community empowerment and the prevention of extremism in a number of countries in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia.

Venue

Room: MS.03
Mathematics and Statistics Building
91福利
Coventry
CV4 7AL

Entrance is free, but please register in advance:

(DIS)ASSEMBLING STATE SPACES

Borders are breaking, ecology is unruly, bodies are suspect, walls are rising, information is clouded, and thoughts are crowded. The relation between states and space appears to be in constant contestation on a variety of fronts. We are witnessing the financialized dislocation of economies and ecologies, the subordination of the state to processes of deregulation and international governance, the militarization of 'failed states', the privatization of all forms of commons, the irruption of mass migrations and the explosion of grassroots dissent. In the context of these new geometries of power, the more the state extends its calculating mechanisms of control, the less firm seems its grasp.

Such questions, rather than appease the problem of imagining 'the state', throw us into the ontological turmoil that this very idea is experiencing. Where is the state? What ground can it claim and what claims can it hold? What is the state? What ideas and materialities is it assembled of and how are these tied to specific historical lineages and geographical projects? Who is the state? Who does it speak to and what agencies can it rely upon? How can we conceptualise the state today?

Rather than taking an abstract conception of the state for granted, we aim to explore its actual, materialised, contested and messy embodiments and imaginations. This implies not only interrogating its place, but also how space has worked as one of its key assembling concepts (i.e. Lefebvre, Deleuze, Massey). How does the state come together or fall apart? What mundane realities does it find itself entangled in? How does it (not) appear as a disparate occurrence over a variety of spatialities and temporalities? How is it assembled and disassembled? How does it coalesce and dissolve?

We invite proposals for abstracts which come from a variety of theoretical positions and empirical focuses that show the contested and unruly aspects of processes of state space (dis)assemblage, and how these can be considered political. Submissions are encouraged to make contributions along these broad themes:

• Corporeality and materiality of state space.
• Temporalities of state action and the rhythms of bureaucracy.
• Spaces of presence and absence of the state.
• City and/or rural space and state space. - The production of state spaces and the everyday.
• Biopolitics, race, migration and state space.
• State spaces, the nation and citizenship.
• Security and state space assemblages.
• Land grabbing , extractivism, open regionalisms and state space.
• State spaces and spaces of exception.
• Post/decolonial approaches to state space.
• Radical approaches to state space.

Abstracts and of maximum 450 words and short biographies of maximum 200 words should be sent to politicalgeographywarwickgmail.com no later than 8th of March 2016, accepted papers will be notified by 30th of March 2016.

PAIS is delighted to announce the availability of funding for travel grants, non-UK attendees will be given preference.

PAIS PhD researcher Matthias Kranke has published a commentary for The Conversation on the question of leadership in the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde has recently announced to stand for re-election notwithstanding legal charges of negligence in a previous assignment as French finance minister. In the commentary, Matt argues that leadership questions get too much attention, often effectively crowding out more important issues. Public debate should centre on how the IMF is governed and what policies it promotes, rather than on who leads the organisation.

The piece can be found at:

Matt's doctoral research examines the politics of collaboration between the IMF and the World Bank. Further information on his research and publications is available at: