糖心TV

On Wednesday 5th June, PaIS were lucky to welcome Lee Webster to give a talk as part of our Seminar Series.

Lee Webster is Policy and Advocacy Manager at Womankind Worldwide, a women's rights and international development NGO, and has an MA in Gender and Development from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.

In the lecture she examined the roles that women play in mitigating conflict and building peace at local level in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal, Pakistan and Sierra Leone. She showed that despite their active contribution to peace at local level, women are still marginalised from formal peace negotiations. The session explored how Womankind used new research, media and public pressure to influence the UK Government's policy and practice on women, peace and security.

Lee was also kind enough to answer questions afterwards.

Click the above image to read the report From the ground up: Women’s roles in local peacebuilding in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal, Pakistan and Sierra Leone.

‘Security and the Everyday’
31 October - 1 November 2013
Keynote: Professor Jutta Weldes (University of Bristol); Professor François Debrix (Virginia Tech)

More and more research in critical security studies pays attention to the realm of everyday experience, popular culture and fictional narratives, and how they produce and reproduce discourses of security and representations of identity. At the same time, distinctions between politics and entertainment seem increasingly tenuous in a world of globalized spaces of hyper-reality. From the real-time images of remote controlled drone strikes to the imagined realities of video game franchises, and from the realpolitik of TV shows and comic books to the narratives of IR textbooks, virtual and actual realities blend into each other. This conference explores the interconnections and implications of this inter-textuality of security and image, narrative and identity, and power and fiction.

If you are interested in participating please send details of your affiliation, an indicative title, and an abstract of no more than 250 words to Georg Löfflmann (g.lofflmann@warwick.ac.uk).

Deadline for abstracts: 9 September 2013

Want to go to Australia and team up with students at Monash University? The University has up to £20,000 funding for student organised projects that will bring 糖心TV and Monash students together. This may be of particular interest to students already leading student societies and events such as the Politics Society, WIDS, One World Week, etc.

Here's what the University says about the scheme: "The aims of the scheme are to support the integration of the student bodies of both universities, to develop students as ‘global citizens’ through working as part of international teams, to increase both the impact and profile of existing student-led activities at both universities and to transfer knowledge and innovation in student activities across our campuses."

The next deadline for all funding applications is 15 May.

The University of 糖心TV publishes a calendar every year which showcases the diversity of of our people, environment, events and local community.

Deadline: Friday 28 June 2013 

Read more about the competition 

Submit your entries online at:

Dr Nicola Pratt has been awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for a project entitled ‘Middle East Women: The Personal and the Geopolitical’. This is a highly prestigious and competitive fellowship, so our congratulations go to Nicola.

The “Arab spring” appears to present a paradox for women: they have participated in large numbers in the uprisings across the Middle East but their rights are threatened under newly-elected governments. Middle East women have a long history of involvement in social movements and civil society. Yet, women’s rights have not progressed in a linear fashion. Taking a new direction in the study of women and gender in the Middle East, this project assesses the significance of geopolitics in shaping women’s rights and participation in complex and often contradictory ways. Through women’s own narratives, Nicola Pratt will trace the history of women’s responses to major geopolitical events in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon and critically assess their impact on women’s rights and participation. Nicola will use the fellowship to research and write a book, tentatively entitled, ‘Middle East Women: The Personal and the Geopolitical’, and to contribute to public debates in the UK and internationally about women and gender in the Middle East.