ÌÇÐÄTV

Dr. , Reader in International Relations at PAIS and Principal Investigator of the together with Gerasimos Tsourapas (SOAS) won a highly competitive International Studies Association venture research workshop grant (10,310 USD).

The workshop is titled “Unpacking the Sending States: Regimes, Institutions, and Non-state Actors in Emigration and Diaspora Politics.” It will gather fifteen scholars from prestigious universities in Europe and the US to discuss how regimes, institutions and non-state actors shape sending states’ extraterritorial engagement with migrant populations abroad. The workshop will take place at the ISA convention in Atlanta in March 2016, and a small follow-up workshop will be conducted at ÌÇÐÄTV University in the fall of 2016. Edited special journal issues are envisaged as a result of this workshop.

PAIS Honorary Professor, Her Excellency Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, President of Malta, has recently met with the UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, and has also addressed the UN Assembley in New York.

On 24 September, UNESCO Director-General met H.E. Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, President of the Republic of Malta, in New York, in the context of the UN Summit on Sustainable Development and the 70th session of the UN General Assembly‎.

President Coleiro Preca spoke of the importance of bridging exclusion, living together and dialogue in all societies today. She underlined the activities of the newly launched Foundation for Well-Being in Society, in Malta, with a focus on providing spaces for children of all backgrounds to exchange and share.

Whilst addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals summit, attended by more than 150 world leaders, President Marie Louise Coleiro Preca said "Global solidarity and a renewed commitment to safeguard human dignity and rights were needed now more than ever before."

“As leaders, we cannot look away. As leaders, we must be steadfast champions of social, economic, and political inclusion. As leaders we must always give voice to the shared truths of our global community. As leaders, we must become advocates for peace and the wellbeing of all,” the President said.

Although, at times, this might not be the most popular position “we must be bold, and defend the rights of vulnerable people wherever they are found”. She added “human dignity, integrity and freedom should be at the heart of our concerns”.

Her Excellency also attended the opening of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York for the speech of Pope Francis the First.

PAIS has made significant gains moving up four places to 3rd in the rankings in Politics in .

We are also placed at No 1 for the student experience in the entire Russell Group of elite departments.

Head of Department, Professor Nick Vaughan-Williams is delighted with the rankings.

Professor Vaughan-Williams said: “This latest ranking in The Times/Sunday Times is yet further evidence of PAIS’ position as one of the UK’s leading Politics Departments. Research and teaching excellence are at the heart of who we are and what we stand for.

Staff and students should feel deservedly proud of this result. With a newly refurbished building and an ambitious agenda for the future, we look
forward to building on this success in 2015/16 and beyond.”

Thank you to all our students and staff for our continued success.

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is an open access collection from Punctum books.

Edited by Suzanne Conklin Akbari, it includes a piece by PAIS Professor entitled 'Writing by Accumulation'.

The aim of the book is not to offer advice on how to write, but for academics to share stories of how they actually write, with techniques, rituals, frustrations and horror stories.

"The contributors range from graduate students and recent PhDs to senior scholars working in the fields of medieval studies, art history, English literature, poetics, early modern studies, musicology, and geography. All are engaged in academic writing, but some of the contributors also publish in other genres, includes poetry and fiction. Several contributors maintain a very active online presence, including blogs and websites; all are committed to strengthening the bonds of community, both in person and online, which helps to explain the effervescent sense of collegiality that pervades the volume, creating linkages across essays and extending outward into the wide world of writers and readers."

The book is free to download, but physical copies are available to buy. is a small, independent publisher that only produces open access material, and relies on sales and donations to enable projects such as this one.

(PAIS, ÌÇÐÄTV), with Co-Is Dr Dallal Stevens (Law, ÌÇÐÄTV), Professor Nick Vaughan-Williams (PAIS, ÌÇÐÄTV), Dr Angeliki Dimitriadi (ELIAMEP, Athens), and Dr Maria Pisani (Malta), have been awarded over 150K for an project entitled 'Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by boat: Mapping and documenting migratory journeys and experiences.’

While migrant deaths en route to the European Union are by no means new, the level and intensity of recent tragedies is unprecedented. More than 1850 deaths were recorded January-May 2015, demanding swift action on the part of EU Member States. This project produces a timely and robust evidence base as grounds for informing policy interventions developed under emergency conditions across the Mediterranean. It does so by assessing the impact of such interventions on those that they affect most directly: migrants or refugees themselves. This project undertakes such an assessment by engaging the journeys and experiences of people migrating, asking:

• What are the impacts of policy interventions on migratory journeys and experiences across the Mediterranean?
• How do refugees or migrants negotiate complex and entwined migratory and regulatory dynamics?
• In what ways can policy be re-shaped to address migrant deaths at sea?

The project focuses on three EU island arrival points in Greece, Italy and Malta. Qualitative interview data, both textual and visual, is produced through an interdisciplinary participatory research approach. The project contributes: an interdisciplinary perspective on the legal and social implications of policy interventions in the region; a comparative perspective on migratory routes and methods of travel across the Mediterranean; a qualitative analysis of the journeys and experiences of refugees and migrants; and methodological insights into participatory research under emergency conditions.