Call for Papers: IPS Belgium Seminar Series 2024 + IPS Café
After a fruitful third seminar series organized between October 2022-May 2023 and concluded with a Forum Workshop event in September 2023, the IPS Belgium organising committee is pleased to share the call for papers for a new seminar series that will start in January 2024.
In the meantime, we are kickstarting our first IPS Café series in Autumn 2023 to provide an informal platform to discuss all things IPS. Join our team of researchers on October 13 over a drink in Brussels to exchange ideas, tips, anecdotes, or theories on "Teaching IPS." On November 17, we will meet for another IPS Café centred around “Research Methods in IPS.” For more info and registration, follow this link.
Aims of the IPS Belgium Seminar Series 2024
As a transdisciplinary approach to the study of International Relations, International Political Sociology (IPS) offers alternative lenses to understand global politics and transnational relations through a wide range of analytical perspectives and empirical research strategies. By questioning the fragmentation of traditional IR categories such as the domestic and the international, high and low politics, or rationality and constructivism, it casts a light on the power dynamics at play in these entangled spaces and on their outcomes. IPS brings insights from sociology, anthropology, geography, history, among others, in the analysis of international relations. One of its aims is to question and analyse the tensions and the connections between the concepts of “the International”, “the Political”, and “the Social”.
IPS Belgium provides a platform for scholars to present and debate their research. We aim to create a space for discussion and to foster collaborations for anyone sharing an interest in the conceptual, ontological and methodological implications of the IPS perspective. From PhD candidates to senior scholars, all humanities and social sciences researchers are welcomed to participate in the seminar and present their work.
Themes in IPS
IPS includes various themes and research interests. We particularly welcome papers about (but not limited to) the following themes:
● Migration and borders
● Postcolonial and decolonial thought
● Security and surveillance
● Technologies of governance
● Identity (gender, race, sexuality, ...)
● Politics of emotions
● Citizenship and sovereignty
● Social mobilizations
● Environmental challenges
● Expertise circulation and knowledge production
● Fieldwork methodologies
● ...
Programme
The seminar series will run monthly from January to June 2024. Each seminar will last 1 hour and be devoted to the discussion of one work-in-progress paper in English (8,000-10,000 words of a journal article, a thesis or book chapter,...). Feedback on the paper will be provided by an invited senior academic and by another seminar participant. The discussion will be followed by questions and answers with the audience.
All selected participants are encouraged to attend regularly and actively. In addition to the presentation of their paper, selected participants will be asked to discuss one paper during another seminar of the annual series.
The seminar format will be hybrid, taking place both at UCLouvain Saint-Louis Brussels and online.
Application
Please send your abstract (max. 300 words), together with a short bio and a description of how your research relates with IPS (max. 100 words) to ipsseminar.belgium@gmail.com by 29 October 2023 (extended deadline). Notifications of acceptance will be sent early November 2023.
Do reach out if you want to join the mailing list to be informed of our future activities or if you have any questions.
IPS Belgium is also looking for new team members, please reach out to us via email if you are interested!
Organising team
Morgane GHYS (ULB) - Marie KWON (ULiège) - Laura LUCIANI (UGent) - Cindy REGNIER (ULB) - Chloé THOMAS (USL-B) – Zeger VERLEYE (UAntwerp)
Rocco Bellanova (VUB) - Denis Duez (USL-B) - Christophe Wasinski (ULB)
More information on www.doingips.org/ips-belgium.