91福利

, Teaching Fellow here in PAIS, has been judged to be one of the 5 Commendees of this year's 91福利 Award for Teaching Excellence (WATE).

The competition is tough with two rounds of quite extensive documentation to be submitted on pedagogical practice and this year there were a record number of entries to the WATE scheme.

Erzsebet has done brilliantly, and it is a great mark of the quality and innovation of her teaching, and reflects really well on the teaching of PAIS as a whole. She will receive prize money of £2000 to enhance her teaching practice.

Erzsebet was one of 5 PAIS staff members who received nominations for this years 91福利 Awards for Teaching Excellence. The other staff members nominated were Anil Awesti, Alex Sutton, Justin Greaves, and Marijin Nieuwenhuis. Congratulations to all.

has just co-edited a special issue of on 'The Politics of Austerity' bringing together leading scholars from the Sciences Po, Paris, Kings College London, Queen Mary, University of London and Cardiff University.

The collected articles, two co-authored by Ben, explore the specific dynamics and particularities of French austerity politics under Hollande within a broader context of changes since the 1980s to democratic institutions and electoral practices, the politics of European integration and the conditions of complex economic interdependence.

The main questions addressed are:

• How did the austerity policy approach to the Eurozone’s economic problems come to prevail?
• To what extent has democratic legitimacy for this approach been secured?
• How will the requirements to curtail public spending be enacted at local and central government level?

The PAIS ladies did a grand job in both the 5k Pretty Muddy and Race for Life this weekend. As promised, photographic evidence was gained!

A huge thank you to all those who came to show their support and for all the generous donations that have been received so far. The current total raised for Myton Hospice so far stands at £806 & counting.

If anyone would like to make a donation, it’s not too late!

PAIS PhD student Marcus Wethered has been offered an internship at the in Washington DC. Marcus is to spend the month of July in Washington working with the museum on the research of their new museum content, the museum is currently being moved to a new location.

The International Spy Museum opened in Washington, DC on July 19, 2002.

It is the only public museum in the United States solely dedicated to espionage and the only one in the world to provide a global perspective on an all-but-invisible profession that has shaped history and continues to have a significant impact on world events.

Museum staff have made it clear that Marcus would be able to take his research in any direction he chooses. If Marcus feels that there was an interesting story on British intelligence from a certain time period and it wasn’t currently on show, then he could work to have it added to the content of their new museum.

We are pleased to announce the absolutely fantastic news that Dr has won the 2013 Michael Nicholson Prize for best thesis in International Relations (IR).

The BISA prize is the keynote recognition of quality and originality in UK IR, and Chris is the first scholar from PAIS to win. BISA roundly commended the thesis:

“In Anarchism, Anti-Militarism, and the Politics of Security, Chris Rossdale sets out to challenge Critical Security Studies for being a part of the militarist agenda that it seeks to confront. Rossdale posits anarchistic thought and practice in order to substantiate a discernible emancipatory logic, to confront the broader problem of security and articulate creative forms of resistance. While heavily theoretical, the thesis engages with real-world anarchist interventions, relying on ethnographic fieldwork to inform the anti-militarist argument, anti-war movement and the larger security problématique. Superbly well written, exceptionally well researched, and delightfully mischievous, this thesis provides an excellent contribution to International Relations.”

Chris is currently a Teaching Fellow at and is now working on a book manuscript, as well as finalising an Edited Special Issue of Globalizations on ‘Resistance and Global Politics’.