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Dr. Maria Koinova published an article "Beyond Statist Paradigms: Sociospatial Positionality and Diaspora Mobilisation in International Relations" in the December 2017 issue of International Studies Review. The article develops a new positional theory for the analysis of diaspora mobilisation in IR, seeking to shift debates beyond realist, liberalist, and constructivist thinking, and speaking to a cluster of socio-positional theories in IR. The piece provides a conceptual discussion and empirical illustrations of diaspora positionality, and its utility to account for different diaspora mobilisation trajectories across the globe. In the development of a comprehensive theory, she focuses on the agency of diasporas and their moderate and transgressive behaviors. Empirically, it discusses diaspora mobilization of Armenians for genocide recognition and of Palestinians for an emerging statehood.

This article is open access:  

You can watch a short video on the article here:

Professor Ben Clift has been awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for a project entitled 鈥楾he OBR and the Politics of UK Growth amidst Brexit, Uncertainty and Austerity鈥�. This will run from October 1st 2018 to September 30th 2021. The trust noted that 鈥楾he competition for these Fellowships has been particularly keen. The Trust received 186 applications and awarded 33 Fellowships. More importantly, the quality of the applications was extremely high and the Trust Board has been gratified both by the outcome and by the distinction of the successful scholars.鈥�

Ben鈥檚 Major Research Fellowship will draw back the veil on how UK growth assessments are constructed amidst pervasive uncertainty to explore the implications of Brexit and the British model of capitalism. The project penetrates the world of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in path-breaking fashion to reveal an under-appreciated politics of economic forecasting, and to analyse the political economy of Brexit. The analysis will explore how economic concepts used to frame and pilot economic policy, even when advanced by technocratic bodies like the OBR, are political constructions, always founded upon contestable and contested normative assumptions. Growth forecasts crucially mediate the politics of austerity through their implications for the tax take, and in assumptions they make about effects of government policy (and shocks like the GFC or Brexit) on actual and potential growth. Government policy options are opened up or closed off by particular renderings of Britain鈥檚 growth trajectory and their assumptive foundations (notably about Brexit effects).

This hugely impressive achievement means that the Department of Politics and International Studies now holds a record four Leverhulme Major Research Fellowships — the others being held by Professors Richard Aldrich, Shaun Breslin, and Mike Saward.

Dr Steven Kettell was the principal author of a report for the National Secular Society that has been published recently. The report, which calls the monarchy and the Church of England to be 鈥渄isestablished鈥� when Prince Charles is crowned King, has been covered in the national press, including The Guardian and the Daily Express:

Dr. Charlotte Heath-Kelly has recently published an article on The Conversation about the Prevent Duty in the NHS.

The article, titled "New counter-terror rules give GPs bizarre incentives to refer mental health patients as radicalisation threat" can be read at the following link:

Keith Hyams has been awarded a British Academy International Challenges Research Project Grant for his project 鈥楻emedying Injustice in Indigenous Climate Adaptation Planning鈥�. The project investigates ethical aspects of the relationship between indigenous communities, climate change, and adaptation policies. It asks how adaptation policies that integrate indigenous knowledge on climate adaptation can work to reduce the inequitable distribution of climate impacts on indigenous populations. The project will be undertaken in collaboration with the University of Makerere in Kampala, and Batwa Indigenous Communities in the South West of Uganda.