Tuesday 7th February 2023
- Speaker: Emily Clifford, University of Exeter
- Time: 13.15-14.05
- Title: Human Trafficking and Futurescapes of Protection in Global Britain
- Abstract: This presentation will showcase my doctoral work, investigating how women who have been trafficked into the UK make sense of and experience protection. Built upon the narratives of three women, Beth, Teresa, and Olivia, as they negotiate post-trafficking protection in the UK, I offer a participant-led insight into the anti-modern slavery sector and a theoretical revision of protection as it relates to race, citizenship, and time. I consider particularly how my participants’ experiences were influenced by understandings and practices of time and timekeeping. Using the work of Sara Ahmed, Barbra Adam, and Lauren Berlant, I argue that protection is an affective and temporal experience intimately tied to belonging and futurity. I contend that protection produces subjectivities in and through time; protection in the present is felt through the capacity to imagine and manage the future. My participants’ relationships to the UK were thus structured by time, yet contradictory logics of protection frequently produced greater violence. Ultimately, I show how promises of protection both obscure and potentially challenge the embodied contingency of the British public sphere..
Tuesday 14th February 2023
- Speaker: Leah Owen, Swansea University
- Time: 13.15-14.05 in CB 4.8
- Title: ‘Enemies within, Enemies without’: Exploring the Role of Location and Urgency in Far Right/Extreme Securitising Politics
- Abstract: ‘Infiltrators’; ‘fifth columns’; ‘cancers’ – how does the location of a supposed threat affect how authoritarian states react to it? Despite important work in social psychology and conflict/security studies, accounts that bridge material and affective explanations remain elusive. Drawing on the ‘neo-ideological synthesis’ outlined by Leader Maynard (2022), as well as work by Neilsen (2015, 2018) and Straus (2015), this presentation outlines a model of ‘intimate threat’ which is well-suited to extreme anti-minority politics. Imagery of dehumanised, pathogen-like enemies and ‘rational’ concerns about national security can combine with particularly deadly results. To develop this model, the presentation examines two very different case studies of ‘intimate threat’ discourse - genocidal dehumanisation, and modern anti-trans movements in the West. While both attempt to securitise an enemy within the nation, community, and home, the former typically has more success in issue-linking these emotional responses with more conventional security concerns, accounting for their differing outcomes.
Tuesday 21st February 2023
- Speaker: Charlotte Luckner, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
- Time: 13.15-14.05
- Title: Does Gender Matter? An Analysis of Women Cabinet Ministers and Their Influence on Climate Policies
- Abstract: Previous research on women representatives and their influence on policy has mostly focused on so-called women's issues such as childcare, parental leave, and healthcare spending. However, studies have shown that women are also more concerned about climate change, implying that women's representation could influence climate policy implementation. This begs the question whether female politicians have a positive impact on climate change policies. This paper addresses this gap at the level of executive bodies of governments. I investigate empirically how representation at the executive level influences the implementation of climate change policies. To measure women's representation, panel data on cabinet members over time are used. Using data from 1980 to 2020 in OECD countries, I examine how women ministers affect the number of policies. The findings suggest that there is a positive significant effect between the share of women as ministers and the number of climate change policies.
Tuesday 28th February 2023
- Speaker: Dr Anouk Rigterink, Durham University
- Time: 13.15-14.05
- Title: Mining Competition and Violent Conflict in Africa
- Abstract: Explanations for the well-established relationship between mining and conflict interpret violence near resource extraction sites as part of conflict over territory or government. We provide evidence that competition between artisanal and industrial miners is also an important source of natural resources related conflict, from qualitative case studies at mining sites in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe and a large-N analysis. For the latter, we use machine learning to estimate the feasibility of artisanal mining across the continent of Africa based on geological conditions. We find the impact of price shocks on violent conflict is roughly three times as large in locations with industrial mining where artisanal mining is feasible as it is in places with industrial mining but no potential for artisanal mining. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that 31 to 55% of the observed mining-conflict relationship is due to violent industrial-artisanal miner competition. This implies new avenues for conflict-mitigation.