This weekend in the reading roundup:
Have a good weekend.
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This weekend in the reading roundup:
Stay safe. And Happy Mother's Day Mum and Grandma!
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This weekend in the reading roundup:
Enjoy the bank holiday weekend!
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This weekend in the reading roundup:
Peace.
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This weekend in the reading roundup:
Enjoy your weekend.
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I will be attending the ISA Annual Convention beginning on Wednesday in San Francisco. It is going to be a busy conference for me. I've agreed to do a fair amount. Moreover, unlike previous years where the old Springsteen song about '57 channels and nothing on' seemed far too appropriate, a quick scan of the programme reveals that there is a lot of really interesting stuff going on this year.
My conference starts off bright and early on Wednesday morning (8:15 in Yosemite C) where I will be serving as the discussant for a panel called 'Through Both Ends of the Lens: Imagery and the Everyday Diffusion of the International'.
At 10.30am in Golden Gate 1, I will be presenting a paper called '"We can have eyes 24/7 on our adversaries": Remote Piloted Air Systems, Scopic Regimes, and the Aesthetic Subjects of Targeted Killing". This paper is a part of the panel on 'The New Materialisms of Affect' (sponsored by the British International Studies Association's Poststructural Working Group).
I then can take a mental break--which will probably include a disco nap--until 6.30pm when I am a participant on the 'Presidential Theme Roundtable—Film and Transnational Diffusion I: Moving Images, Emotions, Materialisms' in Continental 2. This will include a screening of the film Snijeg (Snow) directed by Aida Begić. Having a round-table on film included into the programme is a significant coup and full credit has to go to Aida Hozic for her efforts in expanding the ISA's horizons.
My next two days will be spent attending panels with a break to watch the Oakland Athletics matinee against the Seattle Mariners. I then have the good luck of being on a cracking panel called 'World Politics and Diffusion: The Case of Popular Culture'. The fly in the ointment is that it has been scheduled for the last possible time-slot of the conference: 4.00pm on Saturday in Golden Gate 3. My co-panelists--Nick Robinson, Michael Shapiro, Marianne Franklin, Aggie Hirst, John Sweeney and James Der Derian--are all fantastic and well worth sticking around for. And I will be dragging up the rear, presenting a paper whose latest title is 'Encounters Through the Cooking Glass: Geopolitics and Aesthetic Subjects in Breaking Bad'.
If you see me out and about at #ISA2013 do say 'hello'. I am also happy to meet to talk about papers, special sections, or special issue proposals for Politics and Critical Studies on Security as well as book projects for the Popular Culture and World Politics series. Please speak to me in San Francisco or get in touch with me via my institutional email address.
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This weekend in the reading roundup:
Peace.
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As reported in the Times Higher Education, after a concerted campaign by students, colleagues at UWE, and colleagues from around the world, the decision to close the Politics department has been reversed. And while there will be some restructuring of the degrees on offer and the location of the department--it will change schools--this is extremely good news for staff and students as well as the discipline as a whole in the UK.
At the same time, this particular reversal should not be taken as an opportunity to become complacent. We should not be sanguine that this will be last department under threat. Three factors indicate further problems may be looming over the horizon.
The first is that calls for closure--and closures themselves--are likely to become more prevalent as the post-Browne fees environment begins to shrink enrollments--at all levels-- while producing clear winners and losers based on the ability to recruit ABB+ students--who do not count against government caps. My understanding is that many institutions are in the midst of a three year 'wait and see' approach to enrollments. That three years will be up in 2015.
The second is that many institutions are restructuring and re-branding to emphasise vocational and professional degrees under the assumption that their prospective students are not interested in 'academic' courses. At best, this is going to put increasing pressure on Politics departments across the UK to provide evidence of the 'employability' of their graduates--something that may have contributed to the reprieve at UWE. At worst, the argument that other degrees will recruit better could lead to the threat of further closures.
The third will be the publication of the outcomes of the REF in 2015. While we can hope that the Politics and International Studies panel will be more strategic in its scoring than last time, perceptions of departmental level under-performance are often a helpful catalyst for university managers looking to streamline their operations.
So, what then is to be done?
First, at the level of the discipline, Politics needs to raise its public profile through traditional media, social media, and outreach--particularly amongst school students. The Political Studies Association and the British International Studies Association need to be doing far more to promote the discipline and to make the case that a politically informed citizenry is a public asset.
Second, both organisations need to pre-emptively script a narrative about REF outcomes. This must be a narrative that stresses the wide range of departments where internationally recognised and world leading research is being conducted. And a central part of that narrative needs to be the recognition that excellent world leading research is undertaken outside of the Russell Group.
Third, all departments ought to be thinking about how to best mobilise if a worst-case scenario comes to fruition. UWE has provided some extremely valuable lessons on how to use social media effectively and efficiently to raise awareness and generate pressure. Again, disciplinary associations should be taking a more proactive role in providing support and sharing best practice.
Given the factors noted above, the environment is only going to get harder for the Politics in the short term. Therefore, it is important that the discipline prepares itself accordingly.
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This weekend in the reading roundup:
Have a good weekend.
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This weekend in the reading roundup:
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
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