Other News
Two articles by PAIS researchers published in latest Review of International Studies
The January 2015 issue of the Review of International Studies (RIS) features two articles on the politics of materiality by PAIS researchers Dr and Dr .
The RIS is the flagship journal of the British International Studies Association (BISA) and published by Cambridge University Press.
Both articles explore the insights and limitations of the so-called ‘new materialist’ turn in social sciences for the discipline of International Relations (IR), and showcase cutting-edge conceptual work in PAIS’ International Relations and Security and Political Geography research groupings.
Squire's article, ‘Reshaping critical geopolitics? The materialist challenge’, draws attention to the limits of an approach that emphasises the representational, cultural, and interpretive dimensions of geopolitics, while acknowledging the difficulties of an ontological shift to materiality for many scholars of critical geopolitics.
Vaughan-Williams' article, ‘New materialisms, discourse analysis, and International Relations: a radical intertextual approach’ (co-authored with Tom Lundborg, Stockholm University), examines the implications of new materialist thought for a more expansive understanding of ‘discourse’ in IR, but warns against recycling the language/matter distinction.
The latest issue of the RIS 41(1) can be accessed here:
Collaborative Working Between Departments & Administration
Since smaller academic departments still need access to the same level of strategic capacity as larger units, how best to deliver such capacity in an affordable and sustainable way? The answer: Collaborative working between Academic Departments and the central Administration. Find out more on the
Dr David Webber writes in the New Statesman on Karl Polanyi and English football
Following a recent European conference on football research, leading football writer Martin Cloake approached Dr. to write a piece for the New Statesman. Here David talks about his work on the cultural political economy of English football, and what insights Karl Polanyi might have for fans of the beautiful game in the wake of its own Great Transformation.
The full piece can be read here:

PAIS has performed brilliantly in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework.
PAIS is now one of the top 5 ranking departments in the UK for research excellence in the discipline of Politics and International Studies.
PAIS has risen across all the three major methodologies of ranking departmental quality—research intensity (4th), research power (4th), and overall or ‘raw’ GPA (6th), as shown by the tables below.
As the UK Political Studies Association analysis of the results posits:
“In general, the ‘big five’ departments at Essex, the LSE, Oxford, UCL and 糖心TV come out top from REF2014, whatever ranking system is used.”
Dr Madeleine Fagan second 'most cited' in Contemporary Political Theory
Dr ’s lead article in Contemporary Political Theory is second ‘most cited paper’ in the history of the journal. ‘The Inseparability of Ethics and Politics: Rethinking the Third in Emmanuel Levinas’ offers a rejection of traditional Levinasian ethics and of any politics based on this, arguing instead that Levinas asks us to think in terms of the ethico-political. This is part of Dr Fagan’s broader research project on the repoliticisation of poststructuralist ethics.
Find the full article, and the reply from Amanda Loumansky, here: