Full house for "A Mother Brings Her Son To Be Shot"

There was a full house for the screening of the brilliant “A Mother Brings Her Son To Be Shot”, followed by a lively Q&A with Director and Producer, Sinéad O'Shea. Film-maker and journalist, she has made films and reports for the BBC, al-Jazeera English, the Guardian, RTE and the Irish Times.

The film tells the story of Derry woman Majella O’Donnell who brings her teenage son, Philly, to be shot in both legs by dissident republicans. The film follows the O’Donnell family over a five year period as they come to terms with the “shooting appointment”.

Many were surprised to to learn how little life has moved on from “the Troubles” in the staunchly republican communities of Derry. Despite the Good Friday Agreement's success in maintaining peace, many communities in Northern Ireland remain afflicted by violence associated with dissident paramilitary groups.

Congratulations to Betel... Dr. Betel B. Birhanu!

Betel B. Birhanu defended her Ph.D and received Summa Cum Laude. Betel was a visiting PhD student at the Department for Political Science at UCL from the University of Zurich in early 2018. During this time, not only was she an active member of the Conflict & Change Group, but the group had the pleasure of reading and discussing her work.

Her PhD research challenged the almost taken-for-granted convention in the human rights scholarship that transnational human rights pressure predictably simulates a positive change in state behaviour, particularly when applied to seemingly vulnerable target states. By using the insights drawn from a case study on Ethiopia - a vulnerable target state where transnational human rights pressure should have induced a positive human rights change but rather resulted in an authoritarian entrenchment - it shows how and why this may also be the case in Kenya.

She tells us that the inputs received from the presentation at the Conflict & Change group were really helpful.

Well done, Betel!

Call for Papers

UCL’s Global Governance Institute (GGI) and the Conflict & Change group are hosting a one-day conference titled “Challenges to Global Governance: Conflict, Contagion, and Citizens’ Rights”. It aims to highlight the work of PhD students and post-docs from across the UK and to foster a community among early career researchers engaged in cutting-edge research on these policy-relevant challenges. The conference will take place on 18 February, 2019.

Please click here to read more.

Manuel Vogt teaches short course on Comparative Politics at UNAH, Honduras

Manuel Vogt, Assistant Professor in UCL’s Department of Political Science, taught a short course on social science methodology at the Universidad Nacional Autonóma de Honduras (National Autonomous University of Honduras). The 2-day course introduced participants to the theory and practice of comparativist political science and aimed at furthering the methodological skills of postgraduate students as well as professors in Honduras’ main public university.

Manuel Vogt speaks at Guatemala's Foreign Ministry

On 31 July, 2018, Manuel Vogt, Assistant Professor in UCL’s Department of Political Science, held a talk at the Diplomatic Academy of Guatemala’s Foreign Ministry. Using the mechanisms of power sharing in Switzerland as a concrete example, Manuel’s presentation on “Ethnic Power Relations and Conflict in Multiethnic States” introduced the theory and practice of conflict management to a select group of career diplomats and other Foreign Ministry staff.