Fourth Edition of the PhD Workshop

Members of the Conflict & Change research cluster are organizing the fourth edition of the PhD workshop at the Department of Political Science, University College London.

We are happy to announce that this year’s PhD workshop will be shifting back to an in-person format, Covid-19 restrictions permitting. The workshop is scheduled for March 14th and 15th and will provide early career researchers an opportunity to share their work and interact with other conflict scholars.

This year’s workshop is being organized by Conflict and Change members Sigrid Weber, Finn Klebe, Sam Erkiletian, and Kit Rickard. You can read the call and submit your abstracts below.

Stephanie Schwartz Joins C&C as a Visiting Scholar

Stephanie Schwartz, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, is serving as a visiting scholar with C&C this term. As a visiting scholar, Schwartz will be working on her book manuscript, Homeward Bound: Refugee Return and Local Conflict After Civil War. Homeward Bound examines how return migration after civil wars affects local conflict dynamics in refugees’ country of origin, and in turn shapes future patterns of cross-border displacement. Schwartz is also working on several projects related to the centrality of refugee return in global asylum governance. Schwartz is presenting at C&C on November 17th, 2021.

Katerina Tertytchnaya Awarded a UKRI New Investigator Grant

C&C member Dr. Katerina Tertytchnaya has been awarded a UKRI New Investigator Grant worth £255,000 to support research on the politics on nonviolent repression in contemporary electoral autocracies. The project, which will run for three years, will allow Dr. Tertytchnaya to investigate how contemporary electoral autocracies, regimes that combine authoritarian practices with multiparty elections, use legal strategies of repression, delegated to bureaucrats and courts, in order to restrict protest and hinder opposition and voter coordination. The project builds on pilots funded by the British Academy-Leverhulme Grant, and the SHS Dean’s Strategic Fund. 

Inken von Borzyskowski Awarded a British Academy’s Mid-Career Fellowship

C&C member Inken von Borzyskowski was recently awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship worth £177,000 to support research on her second book, “Exit from International Organizations: The Politics of Membership Suspensions and Withdrawals.” Inken’s second book builds upon her previous co-authored research on withdrawals and suspensions and original dataset on state exit from international organisations by analysing the motivations for exit and their consequences. The fellowship will fund fieldwork to collect archival data on the internal policy debates and reforms within international organisations as well as to conduct interviews with policy experts. This major research project will further advance understandings of international organisations and cooperation. 

Prof Neil Mitchell Launches New Book

Tomorrow 17th April 2021 is the official release date for Professor Neil J. Mitchell's new book Why Delegate? In his new book, Neil investigates the incentives to delegate and the risks we take in doing so. He demonstrates how a new, modified understanding of the simple structure of the delegation relationship – the principal-agent relationship, as economists have described it – simplifies a myriad of important and seemingly disparate problems in private and public life. Using real-world case studies including child abuse in the Catholic Church, the Volkswagen pollution scandal, and FIFA corruption, Neil illustrates the broad functionality of delegation logic and the wide range of incentives at work in these relationships.

Why Delegate? is available to order online at Oxford University Press.