RC15 - Political and Cultural Geography

To content | To menu | To search

Events

Entries feed

27Jan

2nd Congress of Iberian Borders / II Congreso de Fronteras Ibéricas (UCM, January 2024)

Last week, in the Political Science and Sociology school of the University Complutense of Madrid, the Congress was held, organized by the Research Group Space and Power (UCM), the University of Montreal and our Research Commite 15 (RC15). 

Interdisciplinarity, dialogue and hospitality. 

Great event!

Continue reading

17Dec

Sixth International Workshop RC41/RC15 THE WORLD 'SHATTERING': WHAT`S IN STORE FOR THE GEOPOLITICAL SYSTEM TO COME?

On October, the International Workshop happened in Belgrade University, at the Security Studies faculty. 

Amazing papers, warmest local organization, a visit to the Serbian Parliament...a really international event and a great conviviality with our colleagues of RC41. 

Looking forward to the Seventh!

Please see our magnific agenda 

Continue reading

12Dec

IPSA 2023, Buenos Aires

We had an amazing re-encounter in IPSA 2023! Great sessions, amazing city...really good to meet again with the international Political Science. 

Sharing some pics of the Congress to prove it ;-)

 

 

 

Continue reading

02Jul

Last Call for Panels _IPSA 2020 (Lisbon)

Key dates 20 MAY 2019: Call for Panels Opens 10 JUL 2019: Open Panel Proposal Submission Deadline 07 AUG 2019: Call for Papers Opens 10 OCT 2019: Proposal Submission Deadline: Papers and Closed Panels

Continue reading

21May

Call for Panels _IPSA 2020 (Lisbon)

unnamed.png

We are now accepting panel proposals for the next IPSA World Congress of Political Science, taking place in Lisbon, Portugal from July 25 to 29, 2020!

We welcome panel proposals in Political and Cultural Geography.



Please visit wc2020.ipsa.org to find important deadlines and submission guidelines and to submit proposals for open and closed panels.

And note that the Call for Papers will open on August 7, 2019. Currently, paper proposals may be submitted to closed panels only, by invitation from the panel convenor.

Submit a Panel Deadline for OPEN panels: 10 July 2019 Deadline for CLOSED panels: 10 October 2019

Submit a Paper Call for Papers Opens: 7 August 2019 Deadline for Paper proposals: 10 October 2019

08Apr

THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD SCENARIO: NATIONS WITHOUT STATE:

The RC15 and the Research Group Space and Power (University Complutense of Madrid) organizes this workshop in Puebla (México). All welcome!

Continue reading

05Apr

*EXPERIENCES OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE OF POLITICAL COMMUNITIES WITHOUT TERRITORY*

University of Puebla (México), April 11th, 16.00.

Continue reading

13Feb

5th Annual Postgraduate Conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies

Register on Eventbrite: https://www...

Continue reading

27Nov

Espaces, pouvoirs, politiques publiques – Promotion de la jeune recherche

Table ronde organisée par Marylène Lieber (résidente 2018-2019 de l'IEA de Paris / Université de Genève) et Karine Duplan (Université de Genève), avec le soutien de l’Action Plurigenre de l’Université Paris Diderot, de l’Institut Universitaire de France, de l’IEA de Paris et de l’Université de Genève

Continue reading

23Jul

CFP CARFMS16

Freedom of Movement: Exploring a Path from Armed Conflict, Persecution, and Forced Migration to Conflict Resolution, Human Rights, and Development

9th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (CARFMS)

Hosted by

the Conflict Resolution Studies Department of Menno Simons College, a College of the Canadian Mennonite University located at the University of Winnipeg

in

Winnipeg, Manitoba, CANADA

Home of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

12–14 May 2016

Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state; and, (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his or her own, and to return to his or her country. Unfortunately, people in situations of persecution, armed conflict, and displacement are prevented from exercising their right to freedom of movement. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates in the 2014 Global Trends Report that war, conflict, and persecution have displaced some 60 million people worldwide, resulting in the highest level since records have been kept. Of these people, 20 million are displaced across borders, with more than half of this refugee population comprised of children. Since its inception in 2011, the Syrian crisis has produced a total of 11 million internally displaced people and refugees. New waves of “boat people,” displaced by violence, are crossing the Mediterranean Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and entire oceans to seek asylum, safety, and freedom. Many perish on their dangerous journeys, and others who arrive at their destinations are refused entry or detained.

Much of the responsibility falls on the world’s developing countries, who host nine out of ten refugees. Neighbouring countries, governments, and humanitarian organizations struggle to deal with the social, economic, and political ramifications of these situations. The minority who are resettled face numerous integration issues.

The 2016 CARFMS Annual Conference will gather a diverse group of stakeholders such as academics, researchers, students, government officials, lawyers and lawmakers, community organizations, and practitioners (including from non-governmental organizations) to discuss the question: What strategies can host states, origin states, the international community, private citizens, and civil society undertake to fulfill their collective responsibility to address these escalating global forced migration crises? From interdisciplinary perspectives and diverse regional backgrounds, we invite participants to explore, examine, and recommend theories, policies, and practical responses to the theme of freedom of movement in the context of:

  • Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding;
  • Human Rights;
  • Development; and,
  • Methodology and Knowledge Production.

We welcome proposals for individual papers, organized panels and roundtables, film screenings, video documentaries and news media clippings, or poster/photo exhibits around these broad sub-themes. 

1.        Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding

Conflict resolution, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding have the potential to engage people across grassroots to top-level leadership in working towards peaceful relationships and communities. This sub-theme explores and analyzes the interests, motivations, and practices of conflict resolution, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding in addressing social justice and positive peace for refugees and other migrants. How do we commit to conflict resolution, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding practices that address the right to seek asylum in situations of war, armed conflict and persecution? How do structural factors and other root causes (systemic or institutionalized discrimination, cultural imperialism, power-based systems) impact migration and resettlement? How do governments, NGOs, and other actors participate in the different roles, structures, and processes that support or impede freedom of movement? What role can refugees and diaspora communities play in conflict resolution activities that will contribute to post-conflict development, security, and transitional justice? Can freedom of movement and the right to asylum be strategies for conflict transformation? 

2.        Human Rights

Freedom of movement and asylum are fundamental human rights. This sub-theme explores both the actualization and denial of these rights. How are various human rights instruments used to facilitate movement? Who are the actors (individuals, organizations, communities, and governments) who enable movement? What legal and regulatory frameworks can and have been implemented to respect the right to freedom of movement? What restrictions (legal, judicial, administrative or otherwise) serve to prohibit, complicate, or reduce movement and asylum? How does freedom of movement interact with other human rights? Where is the intersection between the human right of freedom of movement and the refugee’s right to non-refoulement

3.        Development

Improving the livelihoods of people migrating due to war, armed conflict, and persecution is imperative. This sub-theme invites contributions that examine innovative strategies for improved livelihoods through economic, social, environmental, and political change in situations of war, armed conflict and persecution. Creating safe and sustainable environments, meeting human needs, and addressing social justice issues are keys to freedom of movement. In situations of short- and long-term displacement, what strategies ensure the timely provision of sufficient, nutritional, and culturally-appropriate food? In protracted displacements, what key strategies enhance skills and develop vocations and small businesses to provide opportunities for young people, increase family income, and build resilience? Considering that the vast majority of migrants are women and children, how do gender considerations inform development planning and implementation? What practices result in meaningful engagement in the decision-making processes that impact the lives of refugees and forced migrants while ensuring peaceful co-existence with host communities? 

4.        Methodology and Knowledge Production

Research in the contexts of migration, war, armed conflict, extreme violence, and serious human rights violations, and development poses particular epistemological, methodological, and ethical questions. This sub-theme explores how knowledge is created, under what structural constraints, and for what purposes. How can non-academics, including forced migrants themselves, overcome structural and epistemological barriers to contributing to research and scholarship? What are the opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinary research in this area? To what extent do standard research methods need to be adapted to the particular political and practical contexts of war, armed conflict, development, and migration? Is there a need for greater cross-pollination of ideas across conflict studies, development studies, and migration studies? What are the particular ethical challenges of research with forced migrants, and how can these be addressed?

SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS

Individuals wishing to present a paper, organized panels and roundtables, film and video documentaries and news media clippings/exhibits, or poster/photo exhibits must submit a 250-word abstract and 100-word biography.

Organized panel proposals or roundtables must include a general title, a 250-word abstract and a title of each paper, as well as 100-word biography of each presenter forming the panel or roundtable.

Please submit your abstract directly online: http://tinyurl.com/ox6oeo2 by September 1, 2015. Earlier submissions are welcome.

We invite filmmakers or producers to submit video documentaries as well as those who wish to present materials in support of their organizations and/or causes, that are directly related to refugees and other forced migrants, to request space on our conference display tables. Please submit a brief outline of your organization and what materials you wish to have included on your display table and whether you will have someone available to answer conference participants’ questions regarding your organization and/or your cause and/or campaign.

More information about the conference can be found on the CARFMS/ACERMF website:http://carfms.org/conferences/9th-annual-conference/. Please keep checking back for updates.

For more information, please contact:

Michele Millard
Centre for Refugee Studies
CARFMS Secretariat
Tel: 416-736-2100 ext. 30391
Email: mmillard@yorku.ca
www.yorku.ca/crs
www.refugeeresearch.net

30Mar

CFP -- Migration Experience: from words to plans

Network Migration Research is pleased to inform you that call for papers planned to do (cf attachment) to its second annual seminar hosted by Migrinter (International Migration), University of Poitiers, France on 16 and 17 june 2015.

We will be adressing at this annual seminar migration experience in the light of speech of those primarily affected and plans that shape it. During two days, we will be discuss about " migration experience: from words to plans".

These two days will be partly dedicated to the network life and a creation of informal discussion space for researchers in migration studies.

For the panelists in the form of workpapers, posters funding opportunities are possible. (futher informations: logistiquereseaumig@googlegroups.com).

Deadline : 20 april 2015

Furthers informations can be obtained from scientifiquereseaumig@googlegroups.com

Network informations: http://reseaumig.hypotheses.org/

Sincerely,

Scientific and logistic commitees - for the second annual seminar Migration Network.

---

Bonjour,

Le réseau Migrations a le plaisir de vous informer de l’appel à communication qu’il lance (pdf ci-joint à ce message) pour son deuxième séminaire annuel qu’il organise à la M.S.H.S. de Poitiers, accueilli par le laboratoire Migrinter de l’Université de Poitiers, France, les 16 et 17 Juin 2015 prochains.

Nous aborderons lors de ce séminaire annuel l’expérience migratoire aux prismes de la parole des premiers concernés et des dispositifs qui la façonnent, au cours de deux journées ainsi rassemblées sous la thématique « L’expérience migratoire : de la parole aux dispositifs ». Ces deux journées seront en partie dédiées à la vie du réseau et à la création d’un espace informel de discussion pour les chercheurs dans les études migratoires, dans la continuité des premiers événements scientifiques organisés par le réseau depuis Juin 2014. L'idée est de créer un cadre informel d'échanges et de discussions où tous les participants pourront évoquer leurs travaux et leurs réflexions, parallèlement et au-delà de la thématique fixée pour l’événement.

La date limite de soumission des propositions de communication est fixée au 20 avril 2015 inclus.

Pour les personnes qui interviendront lors des deux journées sous la forme d’une communication ou d’un poster, des possibilités de financement sont envisageables. (Renseignements: logistiquereseaumig@googlegroups.com)

Deadline : 20 avril 2015

Et pour toute demande d’informations complémentaires : scientifiquereseaumig@googlegroups.com

Informations sur le réseau : http://reseaumig.hypotheses.org/

En espérant vous trouver nombreux à cet événement !

Les comités scientifiques et logistiques – pour le deuxième séminaire annuel du réseau Migrations.

30Mar

CFP -- 33rd International Geographical Congress: Shaping our harmonious worlds

21-25 Beijing, China.

The call for session proposals for the 33rd International Geographic Congress (IGC) in Beijing 2016 is now open.

Unlike IGU regional conferences, this is a MAIN IGU congress held every four years. For more details of the IGC, please look at: http://igc2016.csp.escience.cn/dct/page/70032

Due to its significance as a main congress, your active participation would be highly encouraged. Although currently working hard to collect papers for the 2015 IGU Moscow Regional Conference, the IGU Commission on Political Geography (CPG) needs YOUR SUPPORT for the organization of sessions on political geographic subjects to be discussed in BEIJING 2016.

The deadline for session proposal is APRIL 15TH. This is much earlier than those for regional conferences, but in order to have substantial (i.e. not nominal) sessions for CPG, we need to start to prepare NOW. Your understanding and support for this great event would be greatly appreciated.

If interested, you can submit a session proposal form (see the attached) directly to the Local Organizing Committee or with the sponsorship of an IGU Commission. For IGU-CPG, please contact the co-chairs:

Takashi Yamazaki at yamataka@lit.osaka-cu.ac.jp and/or Virginie Mamadouh at v.d.mamadouh@uva.nl

If you have any questions, please contact us. Thank you very much and hope to see you in Beijing.

Best regards, Takashi Yamazaki Virginie Mamadouh

See attached document for more information.

15Jan

Call for Papers: RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2015

Materialising (geo-)politics: bodies, things, technologies

Organisers: Jason Dittmer (UCL) Martin Müller (Universität Zürich)

Sponsored by the Political Geography Research Group.

Geopolitics has always been about the material world. In classical geopolitics, geographical features shape, indeed determine, the conduct of politics and struggle for territory. In recent debates, however, the material world has entered politics and geopolitics in a much more subtle fashion. A revalorisation of the material has taken place under the banner of a plethora of approaches, often lumped together loosely as ‘new materialism’. Assemblage thinking, actor-network theory, object-oriented ontology, vital materialism, and affect and more-than-human approaches have, in distinct ways, accorded the material world a status that makes it neither the determinant and cause of human action, nor its passive objects, waiting to be inscribed with meaning. For political geography, this expands the engagement with the material world, which feminist geographers pioneered with attention to the body and embodiment.

Political geographers have picked up on this momentum of new materialism to examine how understandings of politics and space change if the material world is reinserted. This session aims to further this engagement. We thus invite contributions that zoom in on particular materials – technologies, objects, bodies, buildings, documents, nature and so on – and the political work they do. We are looking for papers with an empirical grounding that seek to conceptualise the political implications of materials through one or several theoretical lenses. While such work can have a descriptive or analytical character, it could also consider ways in which to arrive at a more responsible material politics.

Proposal for papers, including a title and an abstract of no more than 250 words, should be sent as an attachment to both organisers: Martin Müller (martin.mueller@geo.uzh.ch) and Jason Dittmer (j.dittmer@ucl.ac.uk) until Tuesday, 10 February 2015.

Indicative Literature

Anderson, Ben, and John Wylie. 2009. “On Geography and Materiality.” Environment and Planning A 41: 318–35.

Barry, Andrew. 2013. Material Politics: Disputes along the Pipeline. Oxford: Blackwell.

Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. Oxford: Wiley.

Braun, Bruce, and Sarah Whatmore, eds. 2010. Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Depledge, Duncan. 2014. “Geopolitical Material: Assemblages of Geopower and the Constitution of the Geopolitical Stage.” Political Geography. Accessed July 18.

Dittmer, Jason. 2014. “Geopolitical Assemblages and Complexity.” Progress in Human Geography in press: 1–17.

Fregonese, Sara. 2009. “The Urbicide of Beirut? Geopolitics and the Built Environment in the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1976).” Political Geography 28 (5): 309–18.

Grosz, Elizabeth A. 2008. Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth. New York: Columbia University Press.

Hyndman, Jennifer. 2004. “Mind the Gap: Bridging Feminist and Political Geography through Geopolitics.” Political Geography 23: 307–22.

Meehan, Katharine, Ian Graham Ronald Shaw, and Sallie A. Marston. 2013. “Political Geographies of the Object.” Political Geography 33 (March): 1–10.

Müller, Martin. 2012. “Opening the Black Box of the Organization: Socio-Material Practices of Geopolitical Ordering.” Political Geography 31 (6): 379–88..

Protevi, John. 2009. Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Squire, Vicki. 2015. “Reshaping Critical Geopolitics? The Materialist Challenge.” Review of International Studies 41 (1): 139–59.

Stengers, Isabelle. 2005. “The Cosmopolitical Proposal.” In Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, 994–1003. Cambridge: MIT Press.

15Jan

CFP New and emerging electoral geographies: methods, patterns, movements: EUGEO 2015

Event: EUGEO 2015 - Convergences and Divergencies of Geography in Europe
Date: 30th August - 2nd September
Venue: Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

Session: New and emerging electoral geographies: methods, patterns, movements

Session organizers:
Martin Šimon, Institute of Sociology, CAS

Balázs Szabó, Geographical Institute, RCAES HAS


The party-structure of European countries has changed significantly for the last decades. New cleavages have emerged both in the Western democracies and post-socialist countries. The processes of globalisation, the new waves of immigration, and the economic crisis have had strong effects on the election results in the western part of Europe. The Eastern European party-structure, which originally developed in the early 1990s after the change of regime, has been modified since then due to the new cleavages caused by the EU enlargement and the economic reforms. These changes created a flux of changes in electoral landscape in Europe and thus provides a rich material to be analysed.

For the session of electoral geography we kindly invite researchers dealing with: A) analyses of spatial differences in election results in different countries, regions or cities, and participants of comparative studies of different territorial levels; B) analysis of the impact that the new social movements and the rapid development of communication technologies (the new media) make on the election results; C) spatial features of electoral base of new political parties like populist, pirate, Eurosceptic, anti-globalist parties. The aim of the session is to provide a state-of-art report of a new and emerging research in electoral geography and related fields in Europe, therefore papers dealing with multi-country perspective are encouraged to participate.

We welcome papers that address the issues outlined above.

If interested please visit http://eugeo2015.com/registration for details, registration and abstract submission (max. 250 word)!

Abstract submission deadline is 31st January 2015.

In case of any question, please don’t hesitate to contact Balázs Szabó (szabo.balazs@csfk.mta.hu)

15Jan

CFP 28th Annual PGSG Pre-Conference — DePaul University, 20 April 2015

Sponsor: Department of Geography, DePaul University

Local coordinator: Kara Dempsey (kdempse5@depaul.edu)

Co-organizers: Reece Jones (reecej@hawaii.edu), Natalie Koch (nkoch@maxwell.syr.edu)

The PGSG and the Department of Geography at DePaul University are pleased to announce that the 28th Annual PGSG Pre-conference will be held at DePaul’s Lincoln Park campus on Monday, 20 April 2015. The paper sessions will take place during the day and the PGSG will host a group dinner for pre-conference participants during the evening.

More details will follow about the specific event location, but the meeting is scheduled to take place in Munroe Hall: http://www.depaul.edu/campus-maps/buildings/Pages/munroe-hall.aspx

Information about lodging near the Lincoln Park campus is available here: http://www.depaul.edu/about/campuses/Pages/lincoln-park.aspx#PlacestoStay6

Campus and parking maps can be found at: http://www.depaul.edu/campus-maps/Pages/default.aspx

Deadlines and registration

Please submit a paper title and a 200 word abstract, along with author contact details (name, institutional address, email address), to Reece Jones and Natalie Koch at aag.pgsg@gmail.com no later than 1 February 2015.

As with our past pre-conferences, there will be a nominal $20 registration fee for faculty only. Faculty, please bring cash on the day of the event.

10Dec

CFP: Museums, Discourse & Power -- MIDAS issue 6

MIDAS – Museum Interdisciplinary Studies is launching a call for papers for issue 6 for publication in Autumn 2015. This issue will include a thematic dossier under the theme “Museums, Discourse and Power” with Paulo Simões Rodrigues (University of Évora), and Laurajane Smith (Australian National University) as guest editors.

All accepted articles will undergo a double peer-review. Articles should not exceed 6 000 words (without bibliography) or ca. 40 000 characters (with spaces). It must follow the classical structure of an academic paper. Articles should include abstract, keywords and the biography of the author(s). More information at: http://midas.revues.org/390?lang=en

Deadline: March 31st, 2015.
Send your text to: revistamidas@gmail.com


Museums, Discourse and Power

Throughout their History, museums have established discourses about the cultural significance of their collections through the selection, reception, classification, cataloguing, and exhibition of objects. These discourses were - and still are - determinant for the creation of collective memories as well as for establishing the ways in which societies deal with the past in the present. They also contribute actively to shape social, moral, political and ideological values. By doing so, museums were and are not only institutions of power but also instruments of power. With the theme “Museums, Discourse and Power”, we intend to gather and publish a group of articles about the relation between Museums and Power, and about the relevance of that relation in the past as well as for contemporary societies.
Themes Priority will be given to articles, which approach the theme according to the following topics:

  • Museums and Globalization;
  • Museums and Post-Colonialism;
  • Museums and National Identities;
  • Museums and Immigrations, Emigrations and Migrations;
  • Museums and Cultural and Heritage Politics;
  • Museums and Propaganda;
  • Museums and Education;
  • Museums and their Communities;
  • Museums from the Point of View of their Users (includes visitor studies, community, critiques, etc.);
  • Museums, Art and Historiography;
  • Museums, Art and Gender;
  • Museums and Patronage;
  • Museums and Communication;
  • Museums and Technology.

10Dec

CFP: International Conference

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE


Local Government and Urban Governance: Citizen Responsive Innovations in Europe and in Africa


IGU Commission on Geography of Governance (IGU-GoG) & Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning - University of Lisbon


Lisbon, 9-10 April 2015


Call for Papers


The 2015 Annual Conference of the IGU Commission on ‘Geography of Governance’ (IGU-GoG), to be held in Lisbon, Portugal, 9 - 10 April 2015, at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning – University of Lisbon, aims to explore recent developments in local government and urban governance in Europe and in Africa, challenges and opportunities confronting local government, and the recent reforms and institutional experiments on both continents.


We welcome proposals for papers on any aspect of the broad area of local /urban governance, but would particularly encourage papers on three main themes:

  • Theme 1 - Local Government and Urban Governance in Europe: the impact of austerity, recent reforms and the role of local government in an 'EU Urban Agenda'
  • Theme 2 - Local Government and Urban Governance in Africa: democratic decentralization, good governance and the role of local government in the ‘Post-2015 Agenda’
  • Theme 3 – The use of ICT to expand the role of citizens in Urban Governance: national cases and international comparisons


Participation in the Conference & Selection criteria

  • Participation in the conference requires the presentation of a paper
  • The working language of the conference will be English
  • All submissions will be peer-reviewed for content and appropriateness to this conference
  • Information on registration will be available soon in the conference website
  • If necessary, contact us to discuss any ideas that you might have for a paper on these or on other related issues, even if with a focus outside Europe or Africa


Conference Convenor & Organization

Carlos Nunes Silva

Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning

University of Lisbon

Lisbon, Portugal

E-mail: locgovgeo@gmail.com


Conference venue

Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning

University of Lisbon

Lisbon, Portugal


Further information available in the Conference website


All inquiries, expressions of interests, and abstracts should be sent, by e-mail, to:

Carlos Nunes Silva E-mail: locgovgeo@gmail.com

09Dec

CFP: EUGEO 2015 - Convergences and divergences of Geography in Europe

CFP for the Panel New and emerging electoral geographies: methods, patterns, movements
In EUROREG 2015

Proposed by: Martin Šimon (martin.simon@soc.cas.cz) and Balázs Szabó.

The party-structure of European countries has changed significantly for the last decades. New cleavages have emerged both in the Western democracies and post-socialist countries. The processes of globalisation, the new waves of immigration, and the economic crisis have had strong effects on the election results in the western part of Europe. The Eastern European party-structure, which originally developed in the early 1990s after the change of regime, has been modified since then due to the new cleavages caused by the EU enlargement and the economic reforms. These changes created a flux of changes in electoral landscape in Europe and thus provides a rich material to be analysed.

For the session of electoral geography we kindly invite researchers dealing with:
A) analyses of spatial differences in election results in different countries, regions or cities, and participants of comparative studies of different territorial levels;
B) analysis of the impact that the new social movements and the rapid development of communication technologies (the new media) make on the election results;
C) spatial features of electoral base of new political parties like populist, pirate, Eurosceptic, anti-globalist parties. The aim of the session is to provide a state-of-art report of a new and emerging research in electoral geography and related fields in Europe, therefore papers dealing with multi-country perspective are encouraged to participate.

Other sessions are listed in this page. Note that the deadline to submit abstracts is Jan 31, 2015.

05Dec

CFP: Geopolitics in Europe - 9th Pan-European Conference on International Relations

Geopolitics in Europe: power, crisis and the return of territory -- European International Studies Association’s 9th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, 23-26 September 2015, Sicily, Italy

Organized by: Gonzalo Pozo (KCL) and Ian Klinke (Oxford)

European geopolitics has long enjoyed an intimate relationship with forms of political violence, from 19th century imperialism to 20th century territorial revanchism. Yet, post-Cold War Europe is often cast as a curiously post-geopolitical continent, a place where geopolitics no longer matters. Struggles over territorial space seem to happen elsewhere.

The Russian annexation of Crimea is only the most recent reminder that the politics of territory has not been banned from Europe. This comes as no surprise to those who have noted that whilst the European Union may have dissolved borders throughout the Schengen era, it has long hardened and militarised its outer border in attempt at keeping the global poor outside its fortress of wealth. Classical geopolitics may remain a taboo in the corridors of Brussels power, but it has made a revival in national capitals throughout the EU. Moreover, the Eurozone crisis has installed a new hierarchical geography of core and periphery in which the economies of the North limit the sovereignty of the South. As territorial conflict returns to haunt the continent, territorial borders are also being questioned by peaceful nationalisms, from Glasgow to Barcelona. In short, political power in Europe continues to be exercised over and resisted through territorial space. Perhaps more surprisingly, the recent uprising in Ukraine has also shown that street level violence can still be sparked in the name of ‘Europe’.

Bringing the fields of International Relations and Political Geography into dialogue, this section seeks to attract critically minded work from a whole range of theoretical backgrounds to reflect on the geopolitics of contemporary Europe.

Submissions will address issues such as:
- Territorial conflict, separatism and centrifugal nationalism
- The return of great power rivalry and the spectre of a new Cold War
- The status of classical geopolitical thought in Europe
- The political economy of crisis Europe
- Geopolitical fantasies of the European Union as a global actor
- The European border regime, economic migration and the current refugee crisis
- The role of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in Europe

Submissions will be made through the conference website, but in the meanwhile please get in touch with a title and short (200w) abstract. Ian Klinke (ian.klinke@ouce.ox.ac.uk) and Gonzalo Pozo (gonzalo.pozo-martin@kcl.ac.uk).

21Sep

Report: RC-15 Sessions at IPSA World Congress, Santiago, Chile

IPSA WORLD CONGRESS, Santiago, Chile, July 12-16, 2009

A total of 2389 people participated in the 2009 IPSA World Congress of Political Science in Santiago, Chile. The Research Committee on Political and Cultural Geography (RC 15) of  the International Political Science Association (IPSA) organized the  following four panels at the Congress:

  • Panel 1: Geopolitics of Climate Change > Co-organizers: Sanjay Chaturvedi (Punjab University) and Timothy Doyle (Keele University);
  • Panel 2: Global Energy Resources: Where Geography & Politics Converge> Co-conveners: Aharon Klieman (Tel Aviv University, RC 41 on Geopolitics) and Takashi Yamazaki (Osaka City University, RC 15);
  • Panel 3: Urban Politics, Global Discontent and Resistance > Co-organizers: Joe Painter (Durham University) and Jeronimo Montero (Durham University);
  • Panel 4: Latin American Geopolitics > Co-organizers: Heriberto Cairo (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) and Jaime Preciado (Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico).

Twelve excellent papers altogether were presented from all around the world. All the panels were well-attended. Upon approval by the committee members for our second term, the other co-chair Prof. Sanjay Chaturvedi and I will initiate new projects for the next IPSA World Congress in Madrid 2012. For more information about activities of the IPSA, please look at: http://www.ipsa.org/site/. Information provided by: yamataka@lit.osaka-cu.ac.jp.

- page 1 of 2