The Global Souths Hub and Third World Quarterly (TWQ) team are pleased to be attending the 2024 BISA (British International Studies Association) conference today. Come and find us in the exhibition hall tomorrow.
Spread out over the next three days, there will be more than 325 panels and roundtables and a number of networking and featured events. Here are some talks and information about the programme:
Interpreting the BISA theme: Whose International Studies?
The 2024 theme for the conference is ‘Whose International Studies?’ focuses on the diversification of academia and knowledge creation by asking whose international studies are we teaching, researching, writing, and contributing to? The BISA conference attracts delegates from around the globe; at BISA 2023, there were 1,009 delegates from 44 countries.
The Hub team will be asking delegates what the theme means to them, and what topics they will be interested in next year. We managed to catch up with Nadine Ansorg, a presenter at BISA and TWQ Editorial Board Member before the conference and asked her what the theme means for her.
“As an academic in the UK, I am deeply concerned about the current state of our field and academia more generally. The British government’s policies are impacting academia in several ways, from restricting freedom of speech on contentious issues like the Gaza conflict, to enforcing stringent and counterproductive immigration laws, and underfunding universities, particularly in critical studies. It’s imperative that we ensure independent and critical research can thrive, and that we foster an environment where this is possible for academics, students, and policy-makers”.”
Nadine Ansorg – School of Politics and International, University of Kent.
Nadine’s talk, entitled “The role of state and non-state judiciary institutions in post-war societies“, will be taking place on Wednesday 5 June, 4:45pm-6:15pm as part of a Panel: Peacebuilding as Violence? Engaging with a complex relationship in the Dolce, Hyatt.
Nadine describes her paper as exploring “what determines the continued presence of non-state justice mechanisms in some post-war societies, but not in others? We assume that non-state justice mechanisms are more likely particularly in those cases where they serve a specific function, where they are particularly resilient, or where the state sector is dysfunctional and ineffective. We first undertake a statistical analysis on a dataset on justice sector governance and reform across 40 different post-war countries worldwide from 1990-2016. In a second step we examine our theoretical assumptions in the in-depth case study of Guatemala.”
TWQ Sponsors Keynote: Tarak Barkawi
TWQ is delighted to be sponsoring the keynote speaker for #BISA2024 – globally-renowned academic Tarak Barkawi, who is based at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. The title of Tarak’s keynote is ‘War and World Politics: or why I stopped doing IR’.
Tarak Barkawi studies war and empire. His scholarship uses interdisciplinary approaches to re-imagine the relations between war, armed forces and society in modern world politics. Currently, Tarak is working on two influential projects – you can read more about his work on the BISA website and watch an interview with him on his popular European Journal of International Security article ‘Decolonising War’. Tawak’s talk takes place on Wednesday 5 June, 4.45-6.15pm, Justham/Jane How, Symphony Hall.
Another TWQ Editorial board member, Giulia Piccolino, who is a Senior Lecturer in Politics & International Relations, Loughborough University and researches nationalism during the conflict and conflict management, is delivering two talks at BISA 2024:
- The Resolution of Civil Wars: Changing International Norms of Peace-Making and the Academic Consensus” taking place on Thursday 6 June, 10.45 – 12.15 during a panel, Global Governance and macro-level peace at Concerto, Hyatt. Giulia’s talk is based on this article published as open access as part of the 25th anniversary special issue of the journal Civil Wars.
- The Liberal Consequences of Illiberal Peacebuilding? Civil-Military Relations in Post-Conflict Côte d’Ivoire taking place on Thursday 6 June, between 15:00 – 16:30 as part of the panel, Negotiated State-Building: Unravelling the Complex Relationship between the State and Non-State Actors at Stuart Hall, The Exchange
Keep up to date with what’s happening at BISA on the Hub’s X and LinkedIn channels.
