Call for Papers: Doing IPS PhD Seminar Series 2023-2024 - Deadline 10 July 2023

Aims

Into its 6th year, the ‘Doing IPS’ PhD Seminar Series introduces graduate students to research inspired by International Political Sociology’s (IPS) commitment to challenge methodological and conceptual assumptions in their research disciplines, and ask new questions about transdisciplinary modes of inquiry. It will address the need for doctoral candidates to have a forum dedicated to IPS where they can: (1) present their work and receive feedback from peers and senior academics in the field; (2) engage with contemporary IPS research designs and debates; and (3) develop transdisciplinary and cross-institutional relationships with a view to facilitating further discussions and collaborations around common research themes. Lastly, the series will strengthen the analysis and evaluation skills of early career researchers.

IPS is a collaborative intellectual project that seeks to challenge the fundamental oppositions within traditional theorising, such as that between politics and society, the individual and the collective, structure and agency, internal and external, international and national or local. Scholarship inspired by an IPS-approach centres around two related methodological orientations: firstly, understanding the everyday and situated practices as the primary site of power relations, and secondly, thinking processually and relationally. Thinking and writing from an IPS tradition is an active process, with motion and movement as a central concern. In lieu of fixed and unchanging phenomena, IPS emphasises flows, networks, conjunctures and connections, disjunctures and disconnections, tensions, frictions, accelerations, entanglements, crystallisations, relations, alterities, differences, and multiplicities. Broadly speaking, IPS asks, “what are the connections between the international, the political and the social?” Contemporary IPS analyses embrace ethnographic and other anthropological and sociological methodologies, and employ a range of conceptual traditions, including (but not limited to) deconstruction, Foucauldian, Bourdieusian, postcolonial and decolonial, queer and feminist, assemblage and materiality, Deleuzian, and critical race theory. IPS has a particular interest in transversalising the social and political and interrogating the conceptual and methodological renditions of temporal and spatial boundaries, limits, borders.

Contemporary Themes in IPS

  • Migration, mobility and borders/border management

  • Conceptions of the planetary

  • Citizenship, sovereignty, and exception

  • Resistance

  • The politics of (in)security

  • Surveillance

  • Technology and STS (Science & Technology Studies)

  • Racialisation, racism and coloniality

  • Socio-legal studies and human rights

  • Transnational sociology of expertise

  • Innovations and interventions in critical theory and methodologies

  • Ethnography and fieldwork methodologies

Doing IPS Seminar Series - Programme and Structure

The series runs over a period of 10 months starting from September usually meeting on the last Friday of each month for two hours. The exact time will be determined based on the preferences of the accepted participants. The seminars will rotate between the three host institutions (King’s College London, Queen Mary University of London, and London School of Economics and Political Science), and will take place exclusively in-person.

Standard sessions

In each two-hour seminar, two participants will present a piece of work-in-progress (around 8,000-10,000 words of a thesis chapter, book chapter, journal manuscript) to the group. In preparation for the session, each presenter will invite a senior academic to act as discussant for their paper. The discussion will be followed by questions and answers with the audience. Each presenter is allocated one hour, and all participants are expected to have read the papers in advance. Presenters are encouraged to invite their supervisors and colleagues interested in their work. We also organise special sessions, such as IPS open discussions, roundtables, writing retreats, etc.. Please email us on ips.phd.seminar@gmail.com with your suggestions.

Key Information

  • We invite applications from doctoral students in any discipline across the social sciences and humanities.

  • Please be aware that this is a forum for extensive and engaged discussion of your work, a commitment to attend all seminars throughout the year as well as to participate actively in the discussions is expected from participants.

  • The Doing IPS Seminar series will take place in-person this year, hence priority will be given to participants who can commit to come in-person to the sessions. We understand travel will not always be possible, but we are seeking to, once again, foster a supportive and collegial environment, which is best facilitated by an in-person experience.

  • Limited travel and accommodation grants are available for participants based outside London (to be considered on a case-by-case basis).

How to Apply (Deadline: Friday 10 July 2023 at 12:00pm BST)

Applications to the PhD seminar series should include:

  • A short bio (name, institutional affiliation, the year of your PhD, prospective thesis submission date, keywords that describe your research interests)

  • An explanation of how your work relates to IPS (broadly defined)? (100 words)

  • Title and abstract of the work you want to present (250 words)

  • Whether you would like to apply for a travel/accommodation grant (if you live outside of London)

  • The months in which you would be available to present your paper (ideally three months).

Please send your application to ips.phd.seminar@gmail.com

The deadline for applications is Monday, 10 July 2023 at 12pm BST. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 30 July 2023.

Please email us at ips.phd.seminar@gmail.com if you have any questions or queries.

Doctoral Student Organisers

  • Frederic Larden, School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London

  • Dalia Saris, School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London

  • Nandana Thipperudraiah, Department of War Studies, King’s College London

  • Sara Wong, Department of International Relations, London School of Economic

Senior Academic Organisers

  • Audrey Alejandro, Assistant Professor of Qualitative Text Analysis, Department of Methodology, London School of Economics and Political Science

  • Jef Huysmans, Professor of International Politics, School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London

  • Mirko Palestrino, Lecturer in Sociology, School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London