Dear all,


This is a reminder email regarding the Call for Section Chairs for the SGIR 2013 conference.

Best wishes,

Ian

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'ONE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS OR MANY? MULTIPLE WORLDS, MULTIPLE CRISES'


 

8th Pan-European Conference on International Relations

 

Wednesday 18 – Saturday 21 September 2013, Warsaw, Poland

 

Organised by the Standing Group on International Relations in cooperation with the Institute of International Relations, University of Warsaw and the Polish Association for International Studies





‘The world in crisis’ is a phrase that we often hear, especially in recent years – be it the eurozone crisis, the global economic crisis after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the crisis of legitimacy for a number of states in North Africa and the Middle East, the crisis of US hegemony, climate change and (un)sustainable development, and so on. Curiously, this has led to remarkably little self-reflection among International Relations communities, especially with regard to two key aspects of the phrase: (1) whose ‘world’ is it that is in crisis, and (2) what is labelled as a ‘crisis’ and what is not. 

This forces us to ask why and how this might be the case; in particular, this Call for Papers calls attention to the ways in which contemporary ‘real-world’ crises are frequently viewed as indicative of crises of the paradigms and frameworks promoted by others and not ourselves. As such, this conference asks whether IR is able to respond effectively to the challenges posed to its assumptions and frameworks as such. That is, if international relations is characterised by multiple worlds and multiple crises then what does this say about the discipline of International Relations? 


We are particularly interested in the plurality of perspectives that exist within (and can be brought into) IR in order to highlight how these different perspectives allow us to see four things: (1) our view of IR as a discipline; (2) our conception of ‘the world(s)’ that we live in and study; (3) our view of what is important and/or appropriate for IR to study in the world(s) that we live in; (4) our assessment of crises and their significance, which extends to whether we view them as crises or not in the first place (and thus the question ‘crises for whom?’). In other words, are there many rather than one International Relations and does this mean that there are multiple worlds and crises which IR scholars could study? And why and how does this matter?


While participants are especially invited to respond to the conference theme, proposals on all aspects of International Relations will be considered (please see below). A Call for Panel and Paper proposals will be issued later this year.




CALL FOR SECTION CHAIRS


The academic programme for the conference will be organised in the usual SGIR format of sections composed of panels. The conference can host up to 30 parallel sections. A section may consist of either five or ten 105-minute panel sessions during the programme. Each 105-minute panel should comprise four to five papers plus discussant and chair.  

 

The tasks for a section chair include:

- proposing a section around a theme; populating some panels at the proposal stage; maintaining a balance between established and new-coming scholars, and postgraduate students;

- composing the rest of the section’s program, by selecting papers that were proposed in response to the call for papers;

- identifying panel chairs and discussants;

- taking overall responsibility for the actual execution of their section’s contribution to the conference programme. This final task includes the selection of best paper by a research student in their section.

 

Proposals for sections should include:

 

1). Name, institutional affiliation and email address of the proposed section chair(s).

2). Proposed section title and summary of its theme(s) and rationale(s) (no more than 250 words). Please state here if your proposed section is to contain 5 or 10 panels.

3). Tentative indication of possible panels (panels do not need to be complete, and nor do we require a full list of panels, but a minimum of two papers per panel is desirable). This could, if you so wish, include roundtables (in which case please indicate at least two members of the roundtable line-up).

 

Proposals should be submitted to [log in to unmask] 

As noted above, participants are especially invited to respond to the conference theme, but we welcome proposals on all aspects of scholarship interested in the study of international relations. For example (this list is not exhaustive):

 

Area Studies

Conflict Management

Defence

Democracy

Development

Diplomacy

Environment

Ethics

Ethnicity and Nationalism

Foreign Policy Analysis

Gender Studies

Global Governance

History & IR

Human Rights

Intelligence Studies

International Communications

International Law

International Organisations

International Political Economy

International Political Sociology

International Political Theory

International Relations Theory

Knowledge

Migration 

Peace Research

Security Studies

 

The closing date for section proposals is midnight on Sunday 14 October 2012.

 

Accepted section chairs will be notified by Friday 26 October 2012. This will be followed immediately by a call for paper and panel proposals, with a deadline of Sunday 16 December 2012. Section convenors are expected to select papers and panels by Sunday 10 February 2013.

 

Pinar Bilgin (Bilkent) and Ian Bruff (Loughborough)

Programme Chairs