Call for Applications

Open Virtual International Workshops
for Early Career Researchers, 18 May 2021

In line with the WISC tradition of exploratory workshops—from Cancun in 2015, via Goa, Johannesburg and Prague in 2017/2018, to Barranquilla and Cebu City in 2019—that facilitates a collegial mentorship by senior scholars towards the cultivation of potential state-of-the-art research works of early career academics, WISC invites applications for participation in virtual international workshops, open to any field of studies and research interests relevant to International Studies. Such themes may include, but are not limited to, topics that invite intellectual debates, such as globality, decoloniality, relationality, and other, perhaps more ‘classical’, approaches which IR scholars see as critical in making sense of and possibly contributing to resolve global problems. Applicants from the Humanities and Social Sciences are particularly welcome to apply as long as they can present their research interests as relating to some conception of the “International.” Selected papers will be grouped into panels and are scheduled for virtual presentation and discussion with senior scholars from the Global South and the Global North on 18 May 2021.

Eligibility

Given the limited availability of workshop and paper giver slots the selection process will be competitive. Successful applicants will have a clear profile as promising scholars of any epistemological background dedicated to International Studies in the initial stages of their career. Normally they will be members of one of the member associations of WISC (the list of WISC members is available here). However, applications are also encouraged from scholars in countries where WISC is not present, especially from the Global South.

Format

Complete applications must include:

1. A paper proposal (up to 1.000 words, excluding bibliography) specifying the extant contribution to International Studies
2. CV (1 page)
3. List of publications. References (i.e., names of scholars who may possibly be willing to provide letters of reference if requested) are not required, but up to three references may be provided

Contact and Deadline

Applicants must submit proposals electronically to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. using a pdf document format. Applications with all required accompanying materials contained in a single pdf-file, must be received by January 29th, 2021.

If you do not receive an email confirmation within seven days after sending your proposal, please resend it to the same address since there may have been transmission problems.

All applicants will receive notification as to whether their proposal has been accepted in late February 2021.

The Many Births of International Relations

Date: 16-17 May 2019

Place: Leiden University, The Netherlands

Introduction

Some years ago, David Long and Brian Schmidt called upon International Relations (IR) scholars to march to the archives and get their ‘hands dirty by reading texts, journals, memoirs, and other sources that have been standing dormant on library shelves’. Scholars who have taken up that challenge have copiously questioned IR’s self-narratives, not least the idea that IR took ‘birth’ in 1919.

However, these archives – like much of this revisionist work – are primarily located in the Global North. Our understanding of how the discipline emerged in America and Europe has been significantly advanced, but there is still very little known about how IR arrived in the (former) colonies. As a field of enquiry that worked to transform the empire into the international in Britain, how did, for instance, IR emerge in places like South Africa where the ‘policy work’ of imperial imagination was already being sketched out by Anthropology? How did IR as a field of study define itself as a self-contained body of knowledge that is distinct from other social sciences in other parts of the world? The ideas of the ‘international’ travelled to different parts of the world through both official – universities, think-tanks, journals, and so on – as well as unofficial – private member groups, networks of individuals – channels. How did people, ideas and institutions come together to form a distinct discipline?

Taken together, how do these different stories of, what we generally see as a monolith, ‘International Relations’ hang together? What do they tell us about how IR as a discipline is understood and negotiated in different parts of the world? This workshop will draw together stories of the discipline’s emergence from several parts of the Global South.

Programme

16 May 2019

Venue: 2.60 (Conference Room), Huizinga Building

8:30 – 9:00

Registration
Introductory Remarks: Karen Smith and Vineet Thakur, Leiden University

9:00 – 11:30 Chair: Carolien Stolte (Leiden University)

Morten Valbjorn (Aarhus University)
Title: (Arab) Middle East IR: a young discipline with a long tradition

Siddharth Mallavarapu (Shiv Nadar University)
Title: A Disciplinary History of International Relations: Notes from India
Discussant: Karen Smith (Leiden University)

Zeyneb Gulsah Capan (University of Erfurt) and Türkan Özge Onursal-Beşgül (Istanbul Bilgi University)
Title: Debating the ‘international’: Turkey and the Formation of the discipline of IR
Discussant: Alexander Davis (La Trobe University)

11:30-12:00 Tea/coffee break

12:00 – 13: 30 Chair: Maxine David (Leiden University)

Timothy Vasko (Barnard College)
Title: Nature and the Native
Discussant: Türkan Özge Onursal-Beşgül (Istanbul Bilgi University)

Alexander Davis (La Trobe University)
Title: Settler Colonialism and imagining the 'International' in early Australian International Relations
Discussant: Timothy Vasko (Barnard College)

13:30-14:30 LUNCH

14:30- 16:00 Chair: Santino Regilme (Leiden University)

Arlene Tickner
Title: Styles of Thought in Latin American IR
Discussant: Carlos Milani (State University of Rio de Janeiro)

Carlos Milani (State University of Rio de Janeiro)
Title: The foundation of International Relations and Foreign Policy Analysis in Brazil
Discussant: Zeynep Gulsah Capan (University of Erfurt)

16:30 onwards: Boat tour, followed by dinner at Surakarta, Noordeinde 51-53

17 May 2019

Venue: 148 Lipsius

8:30 – 10:45 Chair: Lindsay Black (Leiden University)

Kosuke Shimizu (Ryukoku University)
Title: The transcendental whole or mere contingency: the tragedy of the second generation of the Kyoto School philosophers
Discussant: Jungmin Seo (Yonsei University)

Jungmin Seo (Yonsei University)
Title: Indigenization of International Relations Theories in Korea: Essencializing Historical Experiences
Discussant: Hwang Yih-Jye (Leiden University)

Hwang Yih-Jye (Leiden University)
Rethinking the "Chinese School" of International Relations: A Critical Appraisal
Discussant: Kosuke Shimizu (Ryukoku University)

10:45-11:15 Tea/coffee break

11:15-12:45 Chair: Alanna O’Malley

Vineet Thakur (University of Leiden) and Peter Vale (University of Pretoria)
Title: The Mission that very nearly failed! The Founding of the South African Institute of International Affairs
Discussant: Thomas Kwasi Tieku (Western University)

Thomas Kwasi Tieku (Western University)
Title: The Legon School of IR
Discussant: Peter Vale (University of Pretoria)

12:45 – 13:15: Next Steps

13:15-14:00 LUNCH

The Workshop was co-funded by:

The World International Studies Committee (WISC)

Research Specialization in International Relations, Leiden University

Institute for History, Leiden University

Leiden University Fund, Leiden University

The Faculty of Finance, Government, and International Relations of Universidad Externado de Colombia, in partnership with the Colombian Network of International Relations (RedIntercol), the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) and with the support of the World International Studies Committee (WISC), invites university professors and researchers linked to the International Relations field, whose research interest is in teaching and/or International Relations theory, to participate in this workshop, which will be carried out in the city of Barranquilla (Colombia) on October 1-2, 2019.

Purpose

• Explore the alternatives and research proposals from different parts of the world that are expanding the field of study and analysis of International Relations, including: economic issues, climate change, international migration, international cooperation for development, the influence of ICT’s, cybersecurity, among others, that is to say, those study phenomena that are increasingly diversifying the theoretical-practical analysis.
• To debate if theoretical pluralism is a valid proposal through which it is possible to give an answer to the classical and new problematics of the discipline.

Thematic tables

The workshop is structured around two thematic tables that will work simultaneously for one day. Each table will have between 12 and 15 participants.

Thematic table 1. New themes and actors / agents in the study of International Relations

1. Is there a transformation in IR studies?
2. Is there a thematic frontier of research in International Relations?

Objective: To identify how new topics have been incorporated into research in International Relations and the impact on their studies.

Invited professor and table coordinator: Mónica Herz, PhD in International relations. Associate Professor of the Institute of International Relations (IRI) at PUC-Rio.

Thematic table 2: Theoretical and methodological proposals in the advancement of the discipline.

1. How are theories and methodologies in International Relations adapted to political, economic, or socio-cultural changes?
2. What is the relationship between academic research and political practice?

Objective: To debate the theoretical and methodological currents most used in the research in International Relations with a view to identify if scientific production in the field of study responds to some of the academic curricula of the universities of the participants.

Invited professor and table coordinator: José Antonio Sanahuja, PhD in Political Sciences (International Relations). Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Sociology and Political Sciences, Complutense University of Madrid and Director of the Carolina Foundation.

Process

• Those interested in participating in thematic table 1 must submit an abstract of no more than 300 words answering one of the following questions:

1. Is there a transformation in IR studies?
2. Is there a thematic frontier of research in international relations?

• Those interested in participating in thematic table 2 must submit an abstract of no more than 300 words answering one of the following questions:

1. How are theories and methodologies in International Relations adapted to political, economic, or socio-cultural changes?
2. What is the relationship between academic research and political practice?

• With the abstract, each participant must include a personal presentation of no more than 200 words (with contact information).
• The required documentation must be sent in a single pdf file, no later than Friday, March 1, 2019, to the email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with the subject “Call workshop. Table (#)”.
• All abstracts received will be evaluated by the academic committee, composed of the following members:

Martha Ardila, PhD. Coordinator of the Observatory in International Systems Analysis (OASIS), Universidad Externado de Colombia - Bogotá

Arlene Tickner, PhD. Research Director, Faculty of Political Science, Government, and International Relations, Universidad del Rosario – Bogotá

Luis Fernando Vargas-Alzate, PhD. President of the Colombian Network of International Relations (RedIntercol).

• The call is made to those with a future interest to participate in a joint publication led by Universidad Externado de Colombia.

Scholarships and financing

The organizers of the workshop will offer 6 scholarships for those who are selected to participate and present an original and innovative proposal:

1. Three for Colombian researchers (transport and accommodation).
2. Three scholarships for researchers outside of Colombia (transport and accommodation).

Project coordinator

Paula Ruiz

Researcher-Professor

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GUIDE FOR WORKSHOP DEVELOPMENT 🇬🇧

GUÍA PARA EL DESARROLLO DEL TALLER 🇪🇸

INFORME FINAL DEL TALLER 🇪🇸

Neighborhoods and Regionalisms: Shifting Borderlines of Inclusion and Exclusion in Central Asia

Date: 3-4 April 2019

Deadline for proposals: February 15, 2019

Place: Dushanbe, Tajikistan

Workshop announcement

This workshop will be co-organized by the World International Studies Committee (WISC) in cooperation with the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at University of Tartu. It intends to give an analytical perspective on the dynamics of different types, forms and modalities of regionalism unfolding in Central Asia where local agency intersects with policies of major power holders. These cooperative and conflictual encounters can be conceptualized as a series of neighborhoods that differently link and relate major actors – China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran - to each other and thus shape these interconnections as areas of inclusion and exclusion, bordering and debordering, securitization and desecuritization.

The workshop plot draws upon a rich legacy of studies in region-(un)making that became one of the buzz words after the end of the Cold War, with the EU being widely considered as a pioneer and a locomotive of regional integration in those spaces where EU-centered normative order could be projected. However, in recent years a new set of questions is being raised: how feasible might be alternative regional projects beyond the West? How important regional dimensions could be for a “post-liberal” and apparently “multi-order” world? Can illiberal political regimes develop their own visions and conceptualizations of regionalism and policies of neighborhood?

Against the backdrop of these main questions, the organizing team wishes to focus on the following landmarks:

• to discuss the variety of regionalisms and neighborhoods in the light of the most recent trends in – and factors of - major actors’ international policies (authoritarian devolution in Turkey and Russia, new economic projects launched by China, different conceptualizations of Eurasianism, etc.);
• to unpack the logic behind the ‘old’ and ‘new’ (emerging) models /forms of regionalism developing at the intersections / meeting points of major actors’ zones of interest and influence;
• to look at these regionalisms and neighborhoods as phenomena of their own, capable of fostering political changes beyond the West, and in particular in the “global South”.

Thus, the structure of the workshop will reflect the basic points we seek to elucidate and understand:

• What Central Asia can tell us about the post-liberal international order and its prospects?
• What are the major factors of change in the region in course of the post-Cold
• War decades, how predictable / unpredictable they were?
• How Central Asia might fit in a new type of international order viewed through post-liberal lens?
• Are regional actors to adapt to the dominant structures of power, or to generate / amplify the post-liberal momentum?
• How the concepts of regionalism and regionalization can be applied toward China’s economic policies and projects in this region?
• Can Central Asia be considered as a meeting point for regionalist strategies developed by external powers?
• And, in a wider sense, how can we look at some other regions (in particular, the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East and the Black Sea area) from a post-liberal perspective, and how the securitization momentum can be related to post-liberalism?

Since these questions are explicitly multi-disciplinary in their conceptual underpinnings, we are eager to bring together a team of contributors coming from various academic backgrounds – comparative politics, foreign policy analysis, international political economy, and cultural studies and sociology. This combination of variegated approaches might be instrumental in uncovering different sides and angles of regionalism and spatiality in Central Asia and beyond, and thus giving more multidimensional vistas to all participants. The workshop will serve as a key point in the process of publishing a special issue in a well reputed peer-reviewed international journal, or an edited volume with one of the leading global publishers.

Contact:
Prof. Andrey Makarychev, Tartu Ülikool
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Workshop program

Venue: Hall Nilufar, Dushanbe Serena Hotel, 14 Rudaki Avenue, Dushanbe, Tajikistan 734013

Day 1 (April 3)

10:00 – Registration, morning coffee and opening of the workshop

10:30 – Session 1: “Theories, Concepts and Vocabularies of Central Asian Regionalism”

• Dr. Filippo Costa Buranelli (University of St Andrews, UK): “International Society and Central Asia – The Brotherly Republics?”
• Dr. Diana T. Kudaibergenova (University of Cambridge, UK): “Routes, Connections and Hubs in the Inter-Asian Context”
• Thomas Linsenmaier (University of Tartu, Estonia): "Russia's Revolt against the West: the Central Asian Dimension"
• Prof Andrey Makarychev (University of Tartu, Estonia): “Central Asia: between the post-Soviet and the post-colonial”

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – Session 2: «Integration and Institutions”

• Prof Tran Viet Dung (Ho Chi Minh City University, Vietnam): “Development of ASEAN Economic Community: Experiences for the Central Asia’s regional cooperation”
• Dr. Shiva Alizadeh (University of Tehran, Iran): «Developmental Motivations and Central Asian Integration”
• Dr. Gulnara Dadabayeva (KIMEP University, Kazakhstan): “Eurasian Union: Is It an Attempt to Restore a Soviet Union?”
• Dr. Karolina Kluczewska (University of Paris 13, France): “Development aid in Tajikistan 1991-2018 and local perceptions of regional organizations”
• Dr. Volkan Ipek (Yeditepe University, Turkey): “Kazakhstan’s foreign policy towards Sub-Saharan African states”

17:00 Tea time and socializing

Day 2 (April 4) for invited speakers

10:00 – 11:30 Round table: “International Relations and the Home-Grown Knowledge in the Global South: Towards a Comparative Framework for Analysis”

12.00 – 13:00 Publication plans and closing discussion