ÌÇÐÄTV

The PAIS Seminar Series launches this Wednesday, October 14th, with a talk from

Kristin M. Bakke is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at University College London and Senior Research Associate at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. She has previously taught at Leiden University and been a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University. She holds a PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research, focusing on self-determination struggles and post-war states, has appeared in journals such as Annals of American Association of Geographers, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Perspectives on Politics, and World Politics. Her first book, Decentralization and Intrastate Struggles: Chechnya, Punjab, and Québec, was recently published with Cambridge University Press. She has received grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, the National Science Foundation (US), and the Norwegian Research Council. She is an associate editor at Journal of Peace Research and serves on the advisory board of Nations and Nationalism, editorial board of Journal of Global Security Studies, management committee of the European Network of Conflict Research, and council of the British Conflict Research Society.

Dr Bakke will be speaking to the title: 'War and Peace (and Institutions)'

One of the hotly debated policy prescriptions for states facing self-determination demands, from Iraq and Spain to Ukraine, is some form of decentralized governance—including regional autonomy arrangements and federalism—which grants minority groups a degree of self-rule. Yet the track record of existing decentralized states suggests that these have widely divergent capacity to contain conflicts within their borders. Through in-depth case studies, as well as a statistical cross-country analysis, Kristin M. Bakke shows in her recent book Decentralization and Intrastate Struggles: Chechnya, Punjab, and Québecthat while policy, fiscal approach, and political decentralization can, indeed, be peace-preserving at times, the effects of these institutions are conditioned by traits of the societies they (are meant to) govern. There is no one-size-fits-all decentralized fix to deeply divided and conflict-ridden states. Decentralization may help preserve peace in one country or in one region, but it may have just the opposite effect in a country or region with different ethnic and economic characteristics.

The seminar takes place at 4pm, in and is welcome to all.

The PAIS Departmental Seminar Series is the focal point of the Department's research culture and activity. The objective is to engage critically and constructively with current research from staff members, their external collaborators, invited speakers, and visiting researchers. To see a full schedule, please see the page.

We are delighted to introduce you to our new academic staff who have joined the department this week.

Dr Mathew Coakley (Teaching Fellow, Political Theory)

Dr Coakley studied Social and Political Sciences at King's College Cambridge before doing an MA in War Studies at King's College, London and then a PhD in Political Theory at New York University. Prior to coming to PAIS he taught at the London School of Economics & Political Science. His primary areas of research are political theory and ethics, with interests in epistemology and the philosophy of economics.

Mathew has published on the value of political legitimacy, the ethics of sweatshops and the problem of how to add up interests / make welfare comparisons, with his first book - "On the Structure of Moral Theories" (forthcoming Bloomsbury 2015) - looking at the options for how to simultaneously morally evaluate both agents and the actions they undertake, and the impact institutions might have on such evaluations.

Dr Georg Loefflmann (Teaching Fellow, US Foreign Policy and American Politics)

Between 2011 and 2014 Dr Georg Loefflmann undertook his PhD studies at PAIS. His PhD thesis is titled: "The Fractured Consensus - How competing visions of grand strategy challenge the geopolitical identity of American leadership under the Obama presidency," and was supervised by  and .

Previously, Dr Loefflmann has studied International Relations in Germany at the FU Berlin, the Humboldt-University, and the University of Potsdam, with a focus on German and European foreign and security policy and constructivist research perspectives.

His research focuses on the geopolitical contextualization and representation of national identity and how this informs the formulation of grand strategy and foreign and security policy.

Dr Briony Jones (Assistant Professor, International Development)

Briony Jones is joining PAIS from swisspeace, an Associate Research Institute of the University of Basel, Switzerland where she has worked since 2011. She in fact studied at PAIS as an undergraduate and has since then completed a MA and PhD in International Development at the University of Manchester. Developing her research and teaching focus on International Development Briony first worked as a Lecturer in International Development at Manchester and then moved to Switzerland where she has been based in Political Science.

Briony will be teaching on the core MA in International Development module 'Theories and Issues in International Development'. She will be continuing her research work focused on the intersection between development, peacebuilding and transitional justice with a special interest on the politics of intervention, knowledge production, citizenship and political identities at times of transition. She has worked on the case studies of Uganda, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Cote d'Ivoire, specialising in qualitative research methodologies.

Dr Chris Rossdale (Teaching Fellow, International Relations)

Dr Chris Rossdale previously lectured at Royal Holloway and City University London. He has a PhD from PAIS, and in 2014 was awarded the BISA Michael Nicholson Prize for best thesis in International Studies.

His research sits at the intersection between international relations theory and the study of resistance, looking at the ways in which our understandings of international politics shift when we begin from the perspective of radical social movements. His PhD thesis looked at the ways in which anti-militarist social movements can help us rethink (and better resist) the concepts and politics of security and militarism. Dr Rossdale is currently in the process of developing a new research project which seeks to interrogate the role of political solidarity in the international system.

Dr Reiko Shindo (Teaching Fellow, International Security)

Before joining PAIS, Dr Shindo was based at the University of Tokyo (Japan) as an Assistant Professor in the Graduate Program on Human Security. She received her PhD from Aberystwyth University (UK).

Reiko’s research is situated at the intersection between politics and geography. Most of her work derives from a general interest in citizenship and community. In particular, she examines how the ambiguous boundaries of citizenship are transforming conventional meanings of politics and the space of political community. Reiko has been committed to interdisciplinary research by drawing on works mainly from citizenship studies, migration studies, border studies, and critical International Relations.

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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(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.