ÌÇÐÄTV

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 ÌÇÐÄTV, 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-Gutiérrez and PAIS's Tom Long have co-authored a new article. The piece has been published by Revista Desafíos as part of a forthcoming special issue on new trends in the study of Colombian foreign policy. The Spanish-language article, "Política exterior colombiana y performatividad: ¿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-Gutiérrez 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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Tom Long's article, co-authored with Carsten-Andreas Schulz of Cambridge University, has been published by International Organization, among the most prestigious outlets in International Relations. "Compensatory Layering and the Birth of the Multipurpose Multilateral IGO in the Americas" emerges from Long and Schulz's AHRC-funded research on Latin America and the formation of international order. In the piece, Long and Schulz illustrate the innovations that led to the creation of the world's first multipurpose, multilateral international organization--a form associated with the League of Nations and the United Nations. The first such body was the Pan American Union, which developed between 1890 and 1910 through a series of bargains between the United States and Latin American states. The article builds a bridge between Global International Relations and the study of institutional design, while also advancing institutionalist understanding of the design and development of IOs.

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Dr. Titipol Phakdeewanich is based at the Faculty of Political Science at Ubon Ratchathani University in Thailand. Previously, he has been a Visiting Research Fellow on Human Rights at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Lund University, Sweden. His research is focused on finding actual solutions to problems experienced by the under-represented, marginalised, and disenfranchised groups within Thailand.

In this seminar, he discusses Thailand’s youth-led democracy movement, that escalated after the dissolution of the Future Forward Party in 2020. Despite government suppression, it continues to challenge aspects of the Thai cultural paradigm, specifically its embedded hierarchical structures, which they argue to be one of the main obstacles for an inclusive, equality-driven, participatory democracy. They claim that people’s fundamental human rights are not fully protected in Thailand.

To what extent has the youth-led democracy movement influenced the military-led government to promote inclusive, equality-driven, participatory democracy? How can the youth-led democracy movement effectively challenge embedded hierarchical structures in Thai society in order to promote inclusive, equality-driven, participatory democracy? Is there an increasing tension between generations when it comes to the question of cultural heritage being perceived to be a reimposition of cultural norms? What is the implication of Youth-led democracy movement on the scheduled 2023 Thailand General Election?

Date: Monday, 17th October 2022

Time: 16:15-17:30

Venue: A0.23, Social Sciences Building

PAIS are delighted to announce that Victor Agboga, has been awarded a prestigious Routledge/Round Table Commonwealth Studentship award for the academic year 2022-23. (The Round Table being the leading Commonwealth journal, founded in 1910, and Routledge being the journal's publishers.) Only two of these awards are made each year.

Victor has worked as a student missionary, a news writer in several media outlets in Nigeria, and a teaching assistant in PAIS. He also owns a with over forty thousand subscribers as of September 2022, where he shares international scholarship tips and opportunities.

Victor’s research revolves around African politics, African political economy, human security, and international development. He has won several international awards including the Standard Bank Africa Chairman Scholarship, the Helmut Schmidt Masters Scholarships for Public Policy and Good Governance, the Mo Ibrahim Governance for Development in Africa Initiative Scholarship, the British Institute in Eastern Africa Grant, and the Working Group in African Political Economy Grant. His research interrogates, both quantitatively and qualitatively, how voters respond when their elected politicians change political parties – whether they punish or reward them, in a non-Western context. He particularly examines this phenomenon in Africa, using Nigeria, the biggest democracy on the continent, as a case study. His research sits against the backdrop of ongoing debates on voters’ agency and party institutionalisation in Africa.

With the Routledge/Round Table Commonwealth Studentship award, he aims to produce an academic paper for the Round Table, plan conference presentations within and outside Africa, film a podcast on his key findings on voters’ response to party switching in Africa, and disseminate them both in academic and policy spaces.

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