Keynote Seminar: ‘What does it mean to do International Political Sociology?’
Keynote Seminar
What does it mean to do International Political Sociology?
29 November 2018, 12.30-14.30
Queen Mary University of London, Arts Two, Senior Common Room
Speakers: Debbie Lisle (Queen’s Belfast), Alvina Hoffmann (King’s College London), Hesham Shafick (Queen Mary)
Chair: Jef Huysmans (Queen Mary)
In the last decade, International Political Sociology has become a ‘meeting ground’ for various social science scholarship. As evident from the diversity of contributors to the journal International Political Sociology, as well as the two edited volumes published by Routledge (Routledge Handbook of IPS and International Political Sociology: Transversal Lines), IPS has attracted scholars from international relations, political science and sociology, to geography, law, history, anthropology and economics. The diversity of IPS scholarship has come in parallel with its further institutionalisation as a field of interest. The seminar series co-organised by Queen Mary’s School of Politics and International Relations and King’s College London’s War Studies Department is one step towards bringing together diverse lineages of thought. Yet, the boundaries of this growing collective remain contested. The eagerness of IPS scholars to avoid reproducing disciplinary boundaries is often confused with inflating the concept of IPS so that it includes ‘everything’. Transdisciplinary research is not about multiplying concepts, disciplines and theories for the sake of diversity, but its central aim is to deconstruct concepts, theories and fields which have attained a commonsensical and unquestionable status.
This seminar consists of two parts. In the first part, the current editor of International Political Sociology, Professor Debbie Lisle, will reflect on what doing IPS means. In the second part, the organisers of the LISS DTP funded PhD seminar series International Political Sociology, Alvina Hoffmann and Hesham Shafick, draw on the contributions to and discussions in the seminar series so far to introduce their perspective on IPS. Between the two parts, the Keynote Seminar aims to reflect on the following:
What does it mean to do IPS?
What does ‘doing IPS’ entail in terms of approaches, methods, practices, and concepts?
What sites of research does IPS scholarship focus on?
What sites of IPS research are still underexplored? What is the future of IPS research?
And what is not IPS?
The Keynote Seminar reflects on earlier papers discussed in the LISS DTP funded IPS PhD seminar series and the International Political Sociology journal to discuss lineages of contemporary IPS research.
To register for the event, please click here.