糖心TV

Dr recently talked to Sky News about the future of Fifa and Sepp Blatter.

, Professor of International Security and Head of the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of 糖心TV, has been awarded a prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize worth £100,000.00 by The Leverhulme Trust.

Philip Leverhulme Prizes recognise the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is judged to be exceptionally promising. Each year the scheme awards up to thirty Prizes across a range of disciplines and in 2015 the selected subject areas are: Classics, Earth Sciences, Physics, Politics and International Relations, Psychology, and Visual and Performing Arts.

The Prize is in recognition of Nick’s research at the intersection of international security and border studies. Drawing together his long-standing interest in the international politics of border security with more recent work on vernacular theories of security threats, he will use the Prize to launch a new three-year project (2016-19) entitled ‘Everyday narratives of European border security and insecurity’.

The project will investigate how European citizens narrate their own experiences and understandings of border security and insecurity against the backdrop of the on-going Mediterranean migration and refugee crisis. In-depth critical focus group research across major cities affected by the crisis – with groups varied according to age, ethnicity, socio-economic background, religion, and gender – will generate rich qualitative insights into how diverse publics make sense of the crisis, the kinds of stories they tell about how it affects their own lives and others’ including migrants and refugees, and the impact of EU border security and migration management policies and practices on ‘regular’ populations.

Aside from several scholarly outputs including a research monograph, the Prize will generate an open access data archive of vernacular theories of everyday border security and insecurity, and research findings will be disseminated via a bespoke project website, targeted media interventions, and engagement with end-users (citizens, migrant and refugee activist groups, governments, the EU Commission, and media) throughout the lifecycle of the research.

Further information about the Philip Leverhulme Prize can be found here:

IPE researchers from PAIS have won the IATL Strategic Project Grant for I-PEEL: International Political Economy of Everyday Life.

This innovative teaching project aims to create an online teaching tool for use in political economy modules. Its content will be steered by students and geared to their development as self-directed learners. The central format will revolve around a set of front page 'tiles' (i.e. clickable squares) presented on a webpage, which will feature an image or object such as a cup of coffee, a bar of soap, or a development charity poster. Our pedagogical purpose is to provide students with an accessible route into the study of the global economy; a topic which is complex and can often feel like it is far removed from the realities of people’s daily existence. The project will achieve this by producing a platform website which will host a series of short academic reflections on the political economy of the objects and events of everyday life. Taking advantage of the online format, the text will also be supplemented with pictures and podcasts, hyperlinked sources, feeds on further reading, and linked forums for online discussion.

The project is funded by the . Project team members are: James Brassett, Juanita Elias, Lena Rethel and Ben Richardson (all PAIS). The online platform will be developed in collaboration with .

We are currently in the process of recruiting volunteers for our student advisory board. Please email Lena at L.Rethel@warwick.ac.uk if you want to get involved.

We also gratefully acknowledge the support from colleagues in CAL, CIM, English and Comparative Literary Studies, Film and Television Studies, History, Law, Sociology, Theatre Studies and WBS.

Chris Browning and James Brassett have been selected as part of the new ‘’ collection for the European Journal of International Relations (EJIR). The Editors Choice articles are ‘specially selected to highlight the journal’s most noteworthy manuscripts’.

EJIR is a Top Ten (ISI) ranked journal in International Relations (IR) and it marks a testament to the research strength of PAIS to have two articles included in the ‘Critical Security Studies’ and ‘Global Political Economy’ sections, respectively. The article titles, abstracts and links are included below.

, by Dr Chris Browning, 糖心TV and Dr Matt McDonald, Queensland.

Abstract

‘Critical security studies’ has come to occupy a prominent place within the lexicon of International Relations and security studies over the past two decades. While disagreement exists about the boundaries of this sub-discipline or indeed some of its central commitments, in this article we argue that we can indeed talk about a ‘critical security studies’ project orienting around three central themes. The first is a fundamental critique of traditional (realist) approaches to security; the second is a concern with the politics of security — the question of what security does politically; while the third is with the ethics of security — the question of what progressive practices look like regarding security. We suggest that it is the latter two of these concerns with the politics and ethics of security that ultimately define the ‘critical security studies’ project. Taking the so-called Welsh School and Copenhagen School frameworks as archetypal examples of ‘critical security studies’ (and its limits), in this article we argue that despite its promises, scholarship in this tradition has generally fallen short of providing us with a sophisticated, convincing account of either the politics or the ethics of security. At stake in the failure to provide such an account is the fundamental question of whether we need a ‘critical security studies’ at all.

Global Political Economy Collection: , by Dr James Brassett, 糖心TV.

Abstract

The article provides a critical analysis of the possibilities and limits of comedy as a form of political resistance. Taking a cue from recent critiques of mainstream satire — that it profits from a cynical and easy criticism of political leaders — the article questions how comedy animates wider debates about political resistance in International Political Economy. The case is made for developing an everyday and cultural International Political Economy that treats resistance in performative terms, asking: what does it do? What possibilities and limits does it constitute? This approach is then read through a historical narrative of British comedy as a vernacular form of resistance that can (but does not necessarily) negotiate and contest hierarchies and exclusions in ‘particular’ and ‘particularly’ imaginative terms. In this vein, the work of Brand, Brooker and Lee is engaged as an important and challenging set of resistances to dominant forms of market subjectivity. Such comedy highlights the importance and ambiguity of affect, self-critique and ‘meaning’ in the politics of contemporary global markets.

Professor has written for Chatham House on how Chinese President Xi Jinping's speech at the UN highlight China’s latest strategies for shaping its vision of a new type of global leadership.

It has become routine for China’s leaders to use high profile international events as a means of projecting a preferred image of what China stands for and how it will act as a great power, one that is perhaps now second only to the US in the league table of global powers. So it is no surprise that Xi Jinping has used his interventions at the UN development summit and his address to the General Assembly to showcase China’s growing role as a global aid actor, and to call for greater ‘democratization’ of global governance institutions (or, in other words, a greater role and say for China and other developing countries). China’s alleged and self-proclaimed (and challenged) predilection for peace, a desire to build a ‘new type’ of (vaguely defined) international relations, and support for the UN as the sole arbiter of when sovereignty might possibly be put aside (instead of the US or a coalition of the willing) are also now relatively well-established and rehearsed Chinese positions.

In addition to wielding China’s financial power in support of this national image projection, Xi’s activities also represent a move towards mobilizing discursive power (话语权) as well. To date, and for a number of years, this discursive power has been primarily deployed in a defensive manner, with the aim of denying the supposed universal nature of many of the norms and principles of the international order. These norms, as articulated by both Chinese government officials and some supportive academic scholars, are not universal at all, but merely the product of a small number of Western countries’ histories, philosophies and developmental trajectories. So, in this formulation, while it is important to have a common set of principles and responsibilities as the basis for international interactions, each country should be free to develop its own nation-specific definitions based on its own unique histories and contexts. And it is only these Chinese-inspired definitions and aspirations – of human rights, for example, or development – that China should be judged against.