Conference: The Construction(s) of Conflict and Peace, Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies (EXCEPS), 9-10 July 2012‏

The Construction(s) of Conflict and Peace

Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies’ (EXCEPS)

9-10 July 2012

University of Exeter, UK, Streatham Campus



Conference Convenor: Professor Gareth Stansfield



The manner in which conflicts are framed is intimately linked to conflicts’ various stages, including efforts to mitigate and/or abate their violent effects, be it through military intervention, humanitarian aid and/or the creation of new political dispensations. The shared understandings that provide the bases for these frames, however, are the products of various discursive practices within governments, NGOs, academia, journalism and manifold cultural productions and (e.g., literature, visual arts, museums, etc.). These practices are contingent and messy, and often deeply contested.



The conference will investigate these practices from a multidisciplinary perspective, incorporating insights from both practitioners and academics. It seeks to uncover how the interplay of economic incentives, organizational cultures, political and social climates, and personal and collective beliefs lead to the production and privileging of particular types of knowledge vis-à-vis conflict and peace. It also seeks to explore how these processes vary across occupations, disciplines, time and space. For instance, how do donor and NGO priorities affect the production of ‘local’ knowledge within a conflict site? Are certain stakeholders accorded greater legitimacy vis-à-vis knowledge production? How does access to conflict areas and privileged informants, language and translation, as well as the processes of data collection and representation inform specific conflict interpretations and mitigation efforts? Similarly, if a conflict is located within the ’academic periphery’, how do the practices and priorities of the ‘core’ (e.g., US academia) shape knowledge production? In terms of time, how does knowledge change as conflicts transition towards peace, thus becoming ripe for ‘lesson’ extraction and exportation?



Beyond governments, NGOs, the media and academia, the conference also seeks to investigate how cultural productions create, affirm and/or challenge knowledge of peace and conflict. Specifically, how is knowledge of conflict and peace encoded through architecture and space planning, the visual arts, literature, museums, etc.? Do the different organizational cultures and intended audiences governing the production of these cultural artefacts create different types of knowledge? How are these types of knowledge incorporated and/or ignored by other knowledge producers within conflicts and peace processes?



The conference committee welcomes abstracts and panel proposals on any aspect of this theme. To submit a proposal for a paper or panel, please send an abstract of a maximum of 500 words to exceps-conference@exeter.ac.uk by 15 January 2012. Successful applicants will be notified by 15 February 2012. As a limited student travel fund will be available, please indicate in your abstract if you wish to be considered for this fund. For further information, please visit the conference website at http://centres.exeter.ac.uk/exceps/events/conference.html

Conference: Living together 'in' diversity. National societies in the multicultural age. CEU Budapest, 21-22 May 2012‏

Contemporary European societies have been recently characterized as
having entered the age of 'super-diversity'. Migratory flows in
particular have contributed to this transformation, due to the
heterogeneous ethno-cultural, and religious background of present
migrants, as well as their social status, age, and mobility patterns.
Among the effects this transformation has brought about is the increased
challenge posed to the constitutive principle of the nation-state, i.e.,
the assumption that identity (nation) and politics (state) can and
should be mutually constituent and spatially congruent. Thus,
unsurprisingly, many states have started perceiving diversity as a
'problem', potentially threatening national unity, while
anti-immigration and xenophobic attitudes have experienced a rapid
surge.
Existing scholarship has offered insightful critical analyses of this
'backlash against diversity', documenting the rise of repressive state
measures designed to limit access of new migrants to the national
territory and citizenship. Other scholars have instead moved away from
the idea of the nation-state, proposing either post-national solutions,
which decouple the cultural (nation) from the political (state), or
transnational paradigms, which implicitly discard the focus on the
nation-state as not only obsolete but also politically questionable.
Yet, despite important insights from this scholarship, social and
political life continues to remain largely structured by discourses,
resources and institutions articulated at the national scale.

AIM

It is therefore the aim of the proposed conference to explore how
'living together in diversity' is imagined, narrated, organized,
justified, and practiced within contemporary national societies. With
the stress on 'in' rather than 'with' diversity we want to move away
from reifying the dominant 'majority' society perspective, which assumes
diversity as something 'carried' solely by immigrants and something that
the 'native' society has to cope with. Some of the questions that we are
interested in are:

- What makes multicultural societies circumscribed by state borders
cohere together?

- What are the ways in which the nation becomes re-signified to
accommodate the ethno-cultural diversity of its populace?

- How do migrants position themselves in national narratives and
political structures?

- What alternative modes and models of belonging are at work within
present national societies?

- In which ways does the national continue to feature as a site of
attachment?



Although we acknowledge that these questions are inescapably normative
in character, we particularly welcome empirically-informed work. The
privileged level of analysis we are interested in is the national scale,
but papers focusing on sub-national and supra-national scales can also
be welcomed inasmuch as they can offer insights regarding how living
together in diversity works at the national scale. Regionally, the
conference will focus on Europe, but contributions discussing other
geographical contexts are also welcomed.
- Is it necessary to have some form of common identification at the
national scale to have functioning states in the first place?

DEADLINES

All potential participants are invited to submit an abstract (250-300
words) to Tatiana Matejskova (MatejskovaT@ceu.hu) by December 31st,
2011. By January 31st, 2012 participants will be informed about the
acceptance of their papers. Confirmation of participation and payment of
the conference fee will be due on February 28th, 2012. The conference
fee of 60 Euros will cover refreshments, lunches and conference
materials.


http://livingindiversity.eu

IREX/WWC Regional Policy Symposium, Transnational Crime and Corruption in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, Washington DC, 18-20 April 2011‏

2012 IREX/WWC Regional Policy Symposium:

"Transnational Crime and Corruption in Eastern Europe and Eurasia"

IREX, in collaboration with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars' Kennan Institute (WWC), is pleased to announce its 2012 Regional Policy Symposium, "Transnational Crime and Corruption in Eastern Europe and Eurasia." The research symposium, supported by the United States Department of State (Title VIII Program), will bring American junior and senior scholars and members of the policy community together to examine and discuss transnational crime and corruption in Eastern Europe and Eurasia from multi-disciplinary perspectives. Topics may include: organized crime, corruption, human trafficking, drug trafficking, illicit trade, terrorism, cyber crime, financial crime and environmental crime, among others.

Junior scholars will be chosen based on a national competition to present their current research on the topic of the Symposium. Grants will be awarded to approximately ten junior scholars.

The Symposium is scheduled to take place April 18-20, 2012 in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area and will involve two full days of reviews of current research projects, roundtable discussions, and the dissemination of research results to the policy community through a networking event.

Technical Eligibility Requirements:

      * Applicants must be US citizens

      * Applicants must either be currently enrolled in an MA, MS, MBA, JD, or Ph.D. program or have held a graduate degree for 10 years or less.

      * Applicants who hold an academic post must be pre-tenure.

Grant Provisions:

      * Round-trip airfare (provided by IREX through its travel office) and/or surface transportation from anywhere in the United States to the symposium site.

      * Meals and accommodations for the duration of the symposium.

To receive more information on the 2011 Regional Policy Symposium, please email inquiries to symposium@irex.org (or visit the program website at http://www.irex.org/project/regional-policy-symposium . [application | more] Application Deadline: December 9, 2011.

Gonda Van Steen

University of Florida

Dept. of Classics and Center for Greek Studies

125 Dauer Hall

Gainesville, FL 32611-7435

Territorial Cooperation in the EU, Barcelona, 2-4 May 2011‏

1. Call for Papers: "Territorial Cooperation in the European Union"

The University Institute of European Studies (IUEE) is inviting papers for a research workshop on "Territorial Cooperation in the European Union" that will take place in Barcelona (May 2-4, 2012).

This multidisciplinary workshop is intended to gather young scholars working on cross-border cooperation in the EU with special regard - but not only - to the Mediterranean countries. Papers should address cross-border, transnational and interregional territorial cooperation from different disciplines (e.g. political science, sociology, economy, geography, spatial planning and law). They should focus on cross-cutting themes (multi-level governance, institutional capacity building, policy learning and Europeanization) and/or on specific policy problems/sectors (territorial cohesion, local development, environment, urban regeneration, climate change and sustainable development, transport, energy, culture).

The two-days workshop will be an opportunity to share ongoing research on the topic and to receive feedback from a group of discussants (senior scholars from the partner institutions) working on the same field.

The programme will be divided into 4 panels:
1. The governance of cross-border cooperation: institution- and capacity-building
2. The European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation and the reform of Cohesion policy: the state of play
3. Policy networks and policy learning in cross-border, transnational and interregional cooperation
4. Cross-border sustainable development strategies and policies Travel and accommodation funding is available.

http://www.euborderregions.eu/about/news/works - see http://www.euborderregions.eu/files/Call_for_Papers_Territorial_Cooperation%20May_2012.pd.pdf

Application Deadline: December 31, 2011.

Conference: International Conference "Human Security", Belgrade, Serbia, 13 December 2011

The Centre for Security Studies, Belgrade, and the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki organise the International Conference “Human Security”, which will be held on 13 December at Aero Club, 4 Uzun Mirkova St., Belgrade.

The conference is the final part of the Aleksanteri Institute’s project “The Environment and Security in the Western Balkans: The Risks and Opportunities Through Co-operation”, supported by the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (more details at: www.helsinki.fi/aleksanteri/english/projects/balkan.htm). The conference is aimed at gathering representatives of Serbian Government and its agencies, experts and academics to discuss the results of research on the role of the environment in questions of regional stability and security in the context of local, regional and international co-operation established to ease these problems. The underlying assumption of the research project is that the link between the environment and security can generate both risks and co-operation in the Western Balkans.

Conference: Milan Stojadinovic - Politics in the age of global turmoils, Belgrade, 12 December 2011‏

Institute of European Studies and the Center for Conservative Studies invite you to attend the first scientific conference about the life and political activities of former Minister of Finance, Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the Government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Milan Stojadinović, titled

MILAN STOJADINOVIĆ - POLITICS IN THE AGE OF GLOBAL TURMOILS

Ten prominent Serbian scientists will present their research on specific aspects of this issue, with following open debate. The conference will be held on Monday, December 12th in the hall of the Art Center, 71 King Peterstreet (www.artcentar.rs).

Your presence and comments will be of great help.

-schedule-

10:00 – 10:30 – Introduction

Dragan Lakićević, Ph.D, IES Director

Miša Đurković, Ph.D, IES Project Coordinator

10:30 – 12:00 – 1st Session

Boško Mijatović, Ph.D – Stojadinović's economic thought and practice as a
Minister of Finance

Goran Nikolić, Ph.D – Stojadinović's Government economic policy

Bojan Dimitrijević, Ph.D – Army and national security durig the reign of
Stojadinović's Government

Miša Đurković, Ph.D - Stojadinović's foreign policy

12:00 – 12:15 - Break

12:15 – 13:30 – 2nd Session

Aleksandar Raković, Ph.D – Stojadinović's cultural policy

Veljko Đurić Mišina, Ph.D – Concordat crisis

Miroslav Svirčević, Ph.D – Stojadinović and Croatian question in Yugoslavia

13:30 – 14:00 - Cocktail

14:00 - 15:15 – 3rd Session

Ljubodrag Dimić, Ph.D – Stojadinović's exit form Mauritius

Srđa Trifković, Ph.D – Stojadinović in emigration

Momčilo Pavlović, Ph.D – Milan Stojadinović as a Rotarian

All presentations are to be within 15 minutes limit. The debate will start
after
the end of the 3rd session until the end of the conference at 16:00 hours.

________

For additional inforation please contact

milan.igrutinovic@ies.rs

Encouraging active citizenship in the post-Lisbon EU, Sofia, 11-18 December 2011‏

ENCOURAGING ACTIVE EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP IN THE POST-LISBON EU

11-18 December, 2011
Sofia, Bulgaria

The UN Youth Association along with JEF and UEF-Bulgaria have the pleasure
of inviting you to participate in the international seminar "Encouraging
Active European Citizenship in the post-Lisbon EU"

The project will meet the need to inform the new European generation how the
EU works and the rights and obligations the EU citizenship brings.


We now have the Treaty of Lisbon, which has been a great step forward.
Nonetheless, it has become clear that even with the new treaty, the EU is
not equipped with the appropriate instruments to pull itself out of a
fundamental crisis. A crisis that has not only developed from a debt problem
into a full blown economic and social disaster but also into a substantial
questioning of six decades of European Integration. Indeed, the issues that
need to be addressed go to the core of the European Project.


The project will involve governmental officials, elected representatives,
scholars, activists of civil society organizations and, most importantly,
the participants themselves in a series of debates, working groups and euro
parties.

The political, social, economic and cultural aspects that the seminar
addresses will contribute to the broader involvement of the participants in
the Future of Europe debates in their countries.

Methodology:

Panel discussions, working groups, debates, lectures, plenary sessions,
simulation games and information market will be some of the methods used to
debate these issues.

The ideas and knowledge generated during the seminar can be used by every
participant and be implemented at local level.

The rich social program, including horse ride in Vitosha mountain
(optional), parties and sightseeing trip to the Rila Monastery, one of the
most significant and picturesque monuments on the Balkans, will enable the
participants to feel the atmosphere of Bulgaria - an ever-evolving and
modern country with great cultural heritage and traditions, dating back from
Roman and Byzantine times.

Participating conditions:

Age 18-30 (no limit for the head of
the delegation)

Countries Slovenia, Greece, Austria,

Costs: 70% of travel costs and 100% of
food and lodging costs
will be covered covered by
the organisers

75 Euro participation fee/person

For more info and an application form write to: asea@scas.acad.bg