ISA Workshop Grant Program

2009-2010 Workshop Grant Program

The International Studies Association announces the deadline for 2009–2010 grants to support workshops for collaborative research that is new and innovative and involves scholars who are drawn from the global international studies community. Workshops will be held in conjunction with the 2010 ISA Annual Convention in New Orleans, LA, February 17-20.

Please see the "Workshop Information" links menu to the left for the important documentation you will need to complete your grant application. Applications must be received by July 31, 2009. 

Scope of Awards
    ISA created the Workshop Grants program in 1992 to promote the interaction of scholars from different parts of the global international studies community. At the annual ISA meeting in Chicago in 2007, the Governing Council substantially expanded and restructured the Workshop Grant Program, more than doubling the total amount of funds available. Two categories of grants were established: Venture Research Workshop Grants of up to $25,000 each and Catalytic Research Workshop Grants of up to $5,000 each.

Venture Research Workshop Grants are targeted for projects that venture into emerging and potentially transformative research areas or preliminary work on untested and novel and path-breaking ideas. The goal is to support truly innovative research that has the potential to make a significant leap or paradigm shift and move the frontiers of knowledge forward.

Catalytic Research Workshop Grants target projects that aim to apply new expertise or new approaches to established research topics and are likely to catalyze rapid and innovative advances. Funds may be used to support several types of workshops: to bring together authors for an edited volume; to plan for a collaborative research project; or to stimulate new approaches to the substance and analysis of a topic.

Both types of grants aim to bring together small groups of participants focusing on a significant research problem that stimulates cross-national examination or perspectives and engages the interests of several disciplines. Topics should be sufficiently well focused to allow in-depth exploration during the time proposed for the workshop. All participants are expected to present a fully-developed scholarly paper on a relevant topic in order to attend the workshop. The workshop, itself, is expected to result in significant scholarly outputs, such as a book-length manuscript and scholarly articles.

Eligibility
    Proposal submitters and all proposed workshop participants must be ISA members. Proposals from junior scholars are particularly encouraged. Workshop participants should be drawn not only from ISA's North American membership, but also from other parts of the world and should include junior scholars. All workshops must be held in junction with and at the time of the ISA 2010 Annual Convention. Other requirements are listed in the Workshop Grant Proposal Guidelines (doc).

Funding
    Grants will be awarded annually by ISA's Workshop Grant Committee. Funding may be used to provide lodging and per diems, pay for research-related travel [when compelling justification is given] as well as other workshop costs. Please consult the Workshop Grant Proposal Guidelines for limitations and restrictions. Funds will generally be available for up to eighteen months from the time grants are made. A proportion of the grant award may be held until the final Workshop Grant Report has been received at ISA headquarters.

Format
    Core proposals should be not more than five pages (single-spaced) in addition to the three-page coversheet document, budget and detailed budget justification and other supporting materials as required.

Proposals must specify: (1) the theme, purpose and objectives of the workshop, (2) the need for and intellectual significance of the meeting and how and in what ways the project is new, innovative and/or path-breaking and will expand knowledge and understanding in one of more fields; (3) how it relates to previous research and theoretical developments, including a list of any recent meetings or publications on the same topic; (4) the format of the workshop, including a statement of how the meeting will be organized and conducted as well as how other ISA members (especially  junior scholars, scholars from various disciplines and nationalities and underrepresented minorities) who are interested in the topic may be included; and (5) how the results of the meeting will be disseminated in order to benefit the larger ISA community and contribute to the enhancement and improvement of knowledge in the field.

Complete proposals must also include:

1. all coversheet documents
2. the five-page core proposal
3. budget and detailed itemized budget justification
4. complete references in proper standard citation form 
5. statement of the amount of support (if any) requested and/or committed from any other sources
6. statement on letterhead or in the form of personal emails from each proposed collaborating individual or organization confirming a commitment to participate in the form proposed
7. complete CV(s) of the proposer(s)
8. detailed biographical sketches (limited to two pages) for each participant, including current affiliation, contact information, educational background, professional positions and appointments, relevant publications with complete citations and a list of examples that demonstrate the broader impact of the individual's professional and scholarly activities that focus on the creation, integration and transfer of knowledge.

Items 1 and 3–8 need not be included in the five-page limit.

Applicants are encouraged to submit proposals electronically to ISA via e-mail to: International Studies Association / isa@u.arizona.edu, using a PDF document format. The entire proposal must be contained in a single document file; please do not send multiple files containing various components of the proposal since these are difficult to manage. Proposals on paper are also accepted; please provide six (6) copies of all materials. The proposal, with all required accompanying materials, must be received by July 31, 2009. 

When you send the proposal to ISA, also send a complete copy to the committee chair:

Kate O’Neill, Chair
E-mail: koneill@nature.berkeley.edu
Postal Mail:
Department of Environmental Science,
Policy and Management (ESPM)
University of California at Berkeley
207 Giannini Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720  USA

If you do not receive a confirmation within ten days (email) that your proposal was received, please contact the committee chair since there may have been problems transmitting the proposals. E-mail queries may also be sent to the Chair. Please use “ISA Workshop Grants” in the subject line.

DEADLINE: JULY 31, 2009

All applicants should expect to receive notification as to whether the proposal will be funded in mid September 2009.

The NGO Challenge for IR Theory

Workshop Chair: Dennis Dijkzeul,  Ruhr University, Bochum
Location: Belasco
Time: 8 AM - 6 PM, Feb. 14, 2009

Workshop Summary:
The renewed interest in NGOs during the 1990s only accelerated in the 2000s, as NGOs continued to proliferate in issues, numbers, and regions of the world, and their impact became impossible to ignore. Anticipating the future, NGOs are likely to remain significant and intriguing actors in world politics. However, we—IR scholars interested in NGOs—have not yet learned from the past, when scholars failed to generate a theoretically informed research agenda on NGOs. Many IR scholars return from field research on NGOs to discover that the main lines of IR theory cannot explain, or even discern, much of what they have seen. This is a growing problem, particularly among young scholars entering the field. In spite of efforts to bridge the gap, there still exists an embarrassing dearth of studies that are both empirically rich, and also theoretically engaged with the central debates of IR theory. The proposed workshop will bring together twelve scholars, each combining theoretical facility and extensive knowledge of real NGOs. Our aim is no grand theoretical synthesis. Instead, we intend to convene a more serious intellectual conversation that clarifies the questions, and sharpens the debate, on the NGO challenge for IR theory. We are convinced that the empirical challenge of NGOs is ―for IR theory‖ in the sense that the discipline itself will be broadened to encompass much more of the reality of world politics. There is an unfortunate imperative in IR scholarship to pose misleading theoretical dichotomies (or trichotomies) between realism, liberalism, and constructivism, as if a particular empirical case could verify only one of them. Our experience of NGO field research suggests, instead, that the theoretical and empirical challenge comes to this: How does a particular organization or network simultaneously institutionalize a) interstate cooperation and normative compliance, b) conflict and asymmetric power relations, and c) reshaping actors‟ ideas and material structures? We find international organizations and institutions politically interesting precisely because they often do two-out-of-three (or all three) things at once. In this ISA workshop (and round table), participants will bring to the table cases and experiences that raise significant theoretical problems touching on any of the following themes: 1) ACTORS: Without demanding that participants agree on a common definition, what light can the range of definitions of NGOs shed on their distinctiveness as actors, or similarities to other actors, in world politics? If networks are created by, or closely linked to, NGOs, what are networks, and can they be understood as collective actors? What other kinds of actors do NGOs partner with or influence, and how do they do so? 2) NORMS: Norms are essential to the self-understanding and public claims of all NGOs, but in what sense do NGOs really create, implement, or enforce norms? Where are the norms that NGOs carry and promulgate actually located? Where do they reside? To claim that norms are ―institutionalized‖ in fluid, protean and internally conflictive networks is to claim what in comparison with other forms of institutionalization? What conceptions of institutions are implicit or explicit in our understanding and experience of NGOs? 3) POWER: How do NGOs claim to exercise, and actually exercise, what forms of power? How consistent or variable is NGO power? How, and in what respects, can NGOs be instrumentalized by other actors, or act as agents and initiators themselves? 4) CONSTRUCTION & CONSTITUTION: Who or what makes (constitutes) NGOs? Are NGOs socially constructed, and if so, how? How have NGOs shaped more powerful actors including states, multinational corporations, and IGOs? Is there something bigger than states—an international community, a transatlantic alliance, a UN System, a global civil society, or an American Empire—and what role do NGOs play in its ―constitution‖? Cutting across these substantive themes is a common focus on theory, not only to diagnose how and why realism, liberalism and constructivism in their conventional expressions have often missed essential aspects of NGO reality, but also to explore and compare how theoretical innovations or borrowings might transcend those blind spots. How do recent innovations in theories of intergovernmental organizations apply to NGOs, or not? How are NGOs conceptualized in relation to, and in comparison with, IGOS in recent IGO theory? The envisioned product of our workshop will be an edited volume, titled The NGO Challenge For International Theory, expected to be published in 2011, edited by William E. DeMars, Dennis Dijkzeul and Aart Holtslag.

Workshop Participants:

• Dennis Dijkzeul, Ruhr University
• William De Mars, Wofford College
• Aart Holstag, University Massachusetts, Lowel
• Morten S. Andersen, London School of Economics
• Cristina Balboa, Yale University
• Elizabeth Bloodgood, Concordia University
• Shareen Hertel, University of Connecticut
• Patrice McMahon, University of Nebraska Lincoln
• Karen Mingst, University of Kentucky
• James Muldoon, Rutgers University
• Anna Ohanyan, Stonehill College
• Bertjan Verbeek, Universiteit Nijmegen

ISA Workshop Observer Registration has closed.

Constructing and Imagining Labor Migration

Workshop Chair: Elspeth Guild, Radboud University, Nijmegen NL
Location: Wilder
Time: 8 AM - 5 PM, Feb. 14, 2009

Workshop Summary:
Movement of persons across borders for the purpose of working or seeking employment has become a matter which states around the world increasingly consider that they should control. The extent and purpose of state control varies from state to state and continent to continent. Against this rapidly changing background, the proposed workshop plans to launch a long-term reassessment of the interaction between states regarding labour migration and the shifting paradigms of control regarding movement of persons. Despite an impressive body of literature on the issue of labour migration, there seems to be little efforts in developing a general framework that catches the labour migration experiences of more than one geographic region. Most literature focuses on how migration is controlled on a national basis, with some exceptions for the European Union and its emerging migration policy. Therefore, one of our objectives is to open a discussion on what are the “global politics of labour migration.” The questions that the workshop will address include the type of control paradigms that can be identified as far as labour migration is concerned, what is the interaction between connected yet asymmetrical control mechanisms or regimes and what is the position of the individual migrant in the various migration-control scenarios that states develop. For the purpose of this workshop, states have been divided in three different categories based on underlying assumptions about the intensity of the control exercised. These categories are (a) states with high control claims, (b) states with ambivalent control claims and (c) regimes with weak control claims. However, this theoretical approach should not be seen as static. Another aim of this workshop is to identify the changing landscape of migration control and therefore point out emerging control patterns as well as the dynamics or correlations that could be made between current paradigms. By analyzing control patterns on five continents we want to develop a normative framework that would help us understand better the impact of state policies on migration control. The workshop builds on previous research in the field of labour migration and the securitization of migration policies thus, bringing together various approaches to migration. By using a multidisciplinary approach we hope to provide a reflexive, multifaceted and global understanding of the dynamics affecting the relationship between the individual migrant and the control of migration performed by various states across the world. The final outcome of the workshop is expected to be series of scholarly articles and a book dealing with various aspects of migration control and the impact that this phenomenon has on the actors involved. Such a volume containing contributions from legal and international relations scholars, geographers and political scientists will create new ties with transnational networks of stakeholders and propose refreshing optics on labour migration. We have been in contact with Asghate about the possibility of publishing such a book with them and their response has been positive.

Workshop Participants:

• Martin Heisler, University of Maryland
• James Hollifield, Southern Methodist University
• Midori Okabe, Sophia University Tokyo
• James Jupp Director, Australian National University
• Christina Gabriel, Carleton University
• Elspeth Guild, Radboud University
• Anna Kocharov, University Finland
• Blanca Garces Mascarenas, University of Amsterdam
• Lilia Ormonbekova, European Union
  
• Mederic Martin Maze, Science Po
• Monica Serrano, College of Mexico
• Kamal Sadiq, University of California Irvine
• Prem Rajaram, Central European university
• Didier Bigo, Science Po
• Sandra Mantu, Radboud University
• Anais Faure Atger, CEPS Brussels

ISA Workshop Observer Registration has closed.

The Public-Private Hybridization of the 21st Century State

Workshop Chair: Ronnie D. Lipschutz, University of California, Santa Cruz
Location: Odets
Time: 9 AM - 5 PM, Feb. 14, 2009

Workshop Summary:
Over the past three decades, the privatization of public functions and services has become a growing and standard government practice. This phenomenon has been attributed to the neoliberal turn as well as the fiscal crisis of the state. It has also been adduced by some to involve a major transfer of power and authority from the public to the private sphere, contributing to a loss of state sovereignty, and by others as purely a new capitalist accumulation strategy. We believe such accounts are incorrect. Empirical evidence suggests that, far from undermining the state, neoliberalism, globalization and privatization—what we call “public-private hybridization”—have actually strengthened the state.

In this project, we argue that such hybridization can be better explained as a combination of political strategy and structural change that is neither a short-term phenomenon nor a reorganization of capital’s influence over the state nor a consequence of the “rise of global civil society.” Rather, we hypothesize that hybridization represents a reorganized form of governmental rule and authority, both within states and among them. Moreover, rather than signifying a “decline of the state,” this process serves to maintain or even reassert state sovereignty. Our hypotheses and research agenda draw upon two, concrete real-world observations. The first is that, notwithstanding 35 years of ascendant neoliberalism, the state remains a formidable political entity that shapes, constrains and modifies the behavior of non-state entities. The second centers on the fact that hybridization is profoundly altering the terms of political life, in democratic as well as authoritarian societies.

By examining these, and related, contemporary developments through rigorous empirical case studies, analysis and theorizing, and investigating the intent and capacities behind hybridization, we hope to determine whether old categories of political economy will be uprooted and what this process can tell us about world politics and economics in the 21st century.

The project’s research objectives include: (1) development of a historically-based theoretical framework to locate public-private hybridization in the long sequence of capital-state transformations; (2) development of a set of empirical case studies to illuminate the “best” to “worst” outcomes of this transformation; (3) assessments of comparative state strategies (e.g., U.S. vs. PRC) that serve to illustrate alternative trajectories; and (4) a normative evaluation of new state-market-society relationships in order to highlight the various political implications of hybridization in the 21st century.
This group of 13-15 contributors will meet three times in 2009-10 (New York, a second location, and New Orleans), to compare research, write paper drafts, present papers on conference panels, and compose one or more edited volumes, as well as journal articles and papers suitable for inclusion in the ISA Compendium Project.

Workshop Participants:

• Shelley Hurt, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo
• Ulrich Brand, Univ. of Vienna
• Phillip Cerny, U of Rutgers-Newark
• Sandra Halperin, Royal Holloway—U. London
• Rebecca Hester, UC-Santa Cruz
• Béatrice Hibou, Sciences Po
• Shelley Hurt, Dartmouth University
• Anna Leander, Copenhagen Business School
• David Levi-Faur, Hebrew University
• Ronnie D. Lipschutz, UC-Santa Cruz
• Iver Neumann, Oslo University
• Ole Jacob Sending, Norwegian Institute of Int’l Affairs
• Linda Weiss, Univ. of Sydney

ISA Workshop Observer Registration has closed.

Reconceptualizing Arms Control for the Challenges of the 21st Century

Workshop Chair: David Mutimer, York University, Toronto
Location: O'Neill
Time: 8 AM - 6 PM, Feb. 14, 2009

Workshop Summary:
The theory and practice of Arms Control, broadly understood, was one of the pillars of the global security apparatus in the second half of the twentieth Century. However, in the post-Cold War era, whilst policy developments may have proceeded apace, there has been little attempt to reconceptualize arms control in the light of contemporary shifts in discourse, practice and material conditions in the international system. The failure to re-establish the relationship between arms control theory and practice is not only an issue of relevance to the academic community, it has also had profound policy consequences. While there have certainly been specific arms control successes in the post-Cold War era, it nevertheless remains the case that, taken as a whole, the practice of arms control across a range of issues from WMD to arms exports or small arms, has not only been ad hoc but often incoherent, unconnected, contradictory and sometimes even counterproductive. The proposed workshop is conceived as the first in a series of seminars that will aim to correct this failure.

Workshop Participants:

• Neil Cooper, University of Bradford
• David Mutimer, York University
• Aaron Karp, Lecturer, Old Dominion University
• Mary Kaldor, Centre for the Study of Global Governance, LSE
• J. Marshall Beier, McMaster University
• Joanna Spear, Associate Professor, George Washington University
• Samantha L. Arnold, University of Winnipeg
• Robert Muggah, Small Arms Survey
• Simon Dalby, Carleton University
• Michael Dartnell, University Partnership Centre, Laurentian @ Georgian
• Christopher Cramer, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
• James Der Derien, Brown University
• Jim Whitman, Bradford University
• Columba Peoples, Swansea University
• Andrew A. Latham, Macalester College
• Paul Rogers, University of Bradford
• Lawrence Freedman, University of London
• Ken Booth, University of Wales Aberystwyth
• Keith Krause, Graduate Institute of International Studies

ISA Workshop Observer Registration has closed.

The International Political Economy of Natural Resources

Workshop Chair: Nita Rudra, University of Pittsburgh
Location: Ziegfeld
Time: 10 AM - 4 PM, Feb. 14, 2009

Workshop Summary:
Changing dynamics in the supply and demand of natural resources are redrawing the old geopolitical maps. Due to the growing demand (and decline) of natural resources, power, order and stability in the international system are at the cusp of a fundamental change, Yet political scientists have yet to tackle the international political and economic causes and consequences of the governance of natural resources; previous studies have been concerned primarily with variations at the domestic level. We propose to bring together leading scholars in international political economy – both at the senior level as well as recently tenured associates – for a symposium on this timely issue. The primary purpose of this initial session is exploratory; panelists will examine ways to push forward the theoretical and empirical frontier of research on natural resources and the global political economy. The purpose of this meeting will be to develop a unified, theoretically informed research program in the international political economy of natural resources. By bringing together senior scholars in the field of IPE, as well as promising junior scholars with demonstrated expertise in IPE, this workshop will frame future research on systemic effects of and upon the increasing dependence for natural resources. The ultimate goal of this conference will be for primarily the junior-level participants, and one or two select senior-level scholars, to write articles for a special issue of a reputable political science journal. We plan to approach the editor of International Studies Quarterly, now that the new editorship has finally been established. We have already established contact with the editors of International Organization and Comparative Political Studies and have been met with interest in the topic’s potential. We are confident that, thanks to the steering we will receive from the titans in the field, along with the proven research ability of the junior scholars, this will be a very attractive selection of articles which will be widely read, reviewed, and cited.

Workshop Participants:

• David Bearce, University of Pittsburgh
• Julia Gray, University of Pittsburgh
• Benjamin Cohen, University of California-Santa Cruz
• John Odell, University of Southern California
• Dennis Quinn, Georgetown University
• Ronald Rogowski, University of California- Los Angeles
• Sarah Brooks, Ohio State University
• Nathan Jensen, University of Wisconsin
• Quan Li, Texas A &M
• Layna Mosley, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• Irfan Nooruddin, Ohio State University
• James Vreeland, Yale University

ISA Workshop Report (PDF): Download ISA_Workshop_Results_Rudra

2008-2009 Workshop Grant Program

The International Studies Association announces the deadline for 2008–2009 grant applications has been extended to July 31, 2008. These grants are given to support workshops for collaborative research that are new and innovative and involves scholars who are drawn from the global international studies community. Workshops will be held in conjunction with the 2009 ISA Annual Convention in New York City, NY, February 15-18.

Scope of Awards
    ISA created the Workshop Grants program in 1992 to promote the interaction of scholars from different parts of the global international studies community. At the annual ISA meeting in Chicago in 2007, the Governing Council substantially expanded and restructured the Workshop Grant Program, more than doubling the total amount of funds available. Two categories of grants were established: Venture Research Workshop Grants of up to $25,000 each and Catalytic Research Workshop Grants of up to $5,000 each. Venture Research Workshop Grants are targeted for projects that venture into emerging and potentially transformative research areas or preliminary work on untested and novel and path-breaking ideas. The goal is to support truly innovative research that has the potential to make a significant leap or paradigm shift and move the frontiers of knowledge forward. Catalytic Research Workshop Grants target projects that aim to apply new expertise or new approaches to established research topics and are likely to catalyze rapid and innovative advances. Funds may be used to support several types of workshops: to bring together authors for an edited volume; to plan for a collaborative research project; or to stimulate new approaches to the substance and analysis of a topic. Both types of grants aim to bring together small groups of participants focusing on a significant research problem that stimulates cross-national examination or perspectives and engages the interests of several disciplines. Topics should be sufficiently well focused to allow in-depth exploration during the time proposed for the workshop. All participants are expected to present a fully-developed scholarly paper on a relevant topic in order to attend the workshop. The workshop, itself, is expected to result in significant scholarly outputs, such as a book-length manuscript and scholarly articles.

Eligibility
    Proposal submitters and all proposed workshop participants must be ISA members. Proposals from junior scholars are particularly encouraged. Workshop participants should be drawn not only from ISA's North American membership, but also from other parts of the world and should include junior scholars. All workshops must be held in junction with and at the time of the ISA 2009 Annual Convention. Other requirements are listed in the Workshop Grant Proposal Guidelines (doc).

Funding
    Grants will be awarded annually by ISA's Workshop Grant Committee. Funding may be used to provide honoraria for paper writers, provide lodging and per diems, pay for research-related travel [when compelling justification is given] as well as other workshop costs. Please consult the Workshop Grant Proposal Guidelines for limitations and restrictions. Funds will generally be available for up to eighteen months from the time grants are made. A proportion of the grant award may be held until the final Workshop Grant Report has been received at ISA headquarters.

Format
    Core proposals should be not more than five pages (single-spaced) in addition to the three-page coversheet document, budget and detailed budget justification and other supporting materials as required. Proposals must specify (1) the theme, purpose and objectives of the workshop, (2) the need for and intellectual significance of the meeting and how and in what ways the project is new, innovative and/or path-breaking and will expand knowledge and understanding in one of more fields; (3) how it relates to previous research and theoretical developments, including a list of any recent meetings or publications on the same topic; (4) the format of the workshop, including a statement of how the meeting will be organized and conducted as well as how other ISA members (especially  junior scholars, scholars from various disciplines and nationalities and underrepresented minorities) who are interested in the topic may be included on a space-available basis; and (5) how the results of the meeting will be disseminated in order to benefit the larger ISA community and contribute to the enhancement and improvement of knowledge in the field. Complete proposals must also include: (1) all coversheet documents, (2) the five-page core proposal; (3) budget and detailed itemized budget justification; (4) complete references in proper standard citation form; (5) statement of the amount of support (if any) requested and/or committed from any other sources; (6) statement on letterhead or in the form of personal emails from each proposed collaborating individual or organization confirming a commitment to participate in the form proposed; (7) complete CV(s) of the proposer(s), and (8) detailed biographical sketches (limited to two pages) for each participant, including current affiliation, contact information, educational background, professional positions and appointments, relevant publications with complete citations and a list of examples that demonstrate the broader impact of the individual's professional and scholarly activities that focus on the creation, integration and transfer of knowledge. Items 1 and 3–8 need not be included in the five-page limit.

Applicants are encouraged to submit proposals electronically to ISA via e-mail to: International Studies Association / isa@u.arizona.edu, using a PDF document format. The entire proposal must be contained in a single document file; please do not send multiple files containing various components of the proposal since these are difficult to manage. Proposals on paper are also accepted; please provide six (6) copies of all materials. The proposal, with all required accompanying materials, must be received by July 31, 2008. 

When you send the proposal to ISA, also send a complete copy to the committee chair:

Kate O’Neill, Chair, 2008-2011
E-mail: koneill@nature.berkeley.edu
Regular mail:
Department of Environmental Science,
Policy and Management (ESPM)
University of California at Berkeley
207 Giannini Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720  USA

If you do not receive a confirmation within ten days (email) that your proposal was received, please contact the committee chair since there may have been problems transmitting the proposals. E-mail queries may also be sent to the Chair. Please use “ISA Workshop Grants” in the subject line.

DEADLINE: JULY 31, 2008

All applicants should expect to receive notification as to whether the proposal will be funded on or soon after September 2, 2008.

Earth System Governance

Workshop Chair: Michele M. Betsill, Colorado State University
Location:  San Francisco Hilton, Yosemite B      
Time: Tuesday, March 25, 2008; 9:00 am – 6:00 pm

We propose to hold a workshop to develop a research agenda for the study of earth system governance. This new area of study draws on previous work in the social sciences on the role of institutions in global environmental change and responds to demands from the emerging worldwide earth system science community for an understanding of how governance systems influence the co-evolution of human and natural systems. It draws in particular on research undertaken by the project on the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC), which ran from 1998 to 2006. The workshop will bring together members of the Scientific Planning Committee for a new long-term international project under the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP). The primary goal of the workshop is to finalize the draft Science Plan for this new initiative. Assuming the Science Plan is accepted by the IHDP Scientific Steering Committee (following an external review in April/May 2008), the Earth System Governance project will be formally launched at the October 2008 Open Meeting of the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Research Community in New Delhi, India.

Workshop Participants:

• Michele Betsill, Political Science Colorado State University
• Frank Biermann, Political Science & Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Ken Conca , Political Science University of Maryland
• Bharat Desai, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
• Joyeeta Gupta, Climate Policy and Law Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Norichika Kanie, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
• Louis Lebel Di, Unit for Social Chiang Mai University Thailand
• Diana Liverman, Environmental Change Institute Oxford University UK
• Andreas Rechkemmer, International Human Dimensions Programme, Germany
• Agus Sari, Ecosecurities, Indonesia
• Falk Schmidt, Int’l Human Dimensions Programme, Germany
• Heike Schröder, Oxford University, UK
• Bernd Siebenhüner, Ecological Economics University of Oldenberg Germany
• Simon Tay, Singapore Institute of International Affairs, Singapore
• Oran Young, Bren University of California-Santa Barbara
• Ruben Zondervan, Institute Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Registration has closed. Thank you for your interest.

Complexity Science in IR

Workshop Chair:  David C. Earnest, Old Dominion University
Location:             San Francisco Hilton, Franciscan D       
Time:                  Tuesday, March 25, 2008, 8:30 am – 6:00 pm

The purpose of this proposed workshop is to elaborate a research agenda in International Relations for complexity science. The volume of recent scholarship illustrates that complexity science today appeals more broadly to International Relations scholars than ever before. Yet this research reflects both different research traditions and disparate findings. There seems, therefore, to be a genuine need for a forum and subsequent body of work to pull some of this research activity together and provide a core focus to the topic which can stimulate future scholarly investigation.

It has been over a decade since three scholars of international relations separately published influential works that sought to call our discipline’s attention to “complexity” in world politics. Robert Jervis’s System Effects (1997) explored how a new scientific corpus known as “complexity science” might change the ways we think about international politics. That same year Robert Axelrod published The Complexity of Cooperation, in which he applied the new methods of complexity science to his research agenda of understanding dilemmas of interstate cooperation. Prior to these two works, James N. Rosenau published Turbulence in World Politics (1990), one of the earliest works in international relations that highlighted the promise of complexity science for understanding the dynamic changes we witnessed after the Cold War.

Despite these promising beginnings, international relations researchers have still to articulate a coherent research agenda for complexity science in international relations. Yet complexity science clearly has profound ramifications for our understanding of both the physical and social worlds. Through a flurry of concepts, including networks, open systems, distributed agency, non-linearity, feedback loops, self-organisation, and emergence, this new research paradigm has challenged established scientific wisdom and its claims about predictability, control, and the very nature of physical reality. These concepts have been fruitfully applied across a vast range of natural sciences from meteorology, ecology, molecular biology, and neuroscience to chemistry, physics and zoology. Numerous thinkers in a variety of disciplines have either adopted ideas drawn directly from complexity, or connected existing concerns to those concepts and applied them fruitfully in areas as diverse as economics, sociology, architecture, business and art. These ideas have lingered at the very margins of debate in international relations, but have failed to generate a significant groundswell of complimentary research despite a growing interest in their promise (Rosenau 1990; 2003; Axelrod 1997; Cederman 1997; Hoffmann 2005).

Considerable disagreement exists among researchers over whether complexity science offers a new method of inquiry or merely a useful set of metaphors. To date, scholars are yet to systematically elaborate their points of agreement and disagreement, nor have they identified areas of research that might intermediate their disagreements and yield theoretical progress. This workshop is proposed to provide an important forum for delineating and catalyzing a research programme for complexity and International relations.

Workshop Participants:

• Antoine Bousquet, Birkbeck, University of London, UK
• Simon J. Curtis, London School of Economics, UK
• David C. Earnest, Old Dominion University
• James Rosenau, George Washington University
• Colin Wight, University of Exeter, UK
• Paul Cilliers, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
• Neil Harrison,Sustainable Development Institute
• Patrick Meier, Tufts University
• Robert Cutler, Carleton University, Canada
• Christine Brachthäuser, University of Tübingen, Germany
• Matthew Hoffmann, University of Toronto, Canada
• Kim Holloman, Science Applications Intl Corporation

This workshop is sold out. Thank you for your interest.

Post-Imperial Futures

Workshop Chair: Jacqueline Lasky, University of Hawai’i, Manoa
Location: San Francisco Hilton,    Yosemite C   
Time: Tuesday, March 25, 2008; 8:00 am – 4:30 pm

Although there is a ceaseless proliferation of research on global politics within critical  international relations theory, a considerable gap remains within the areas of indigenism, anarchism and feminism, the intersectional analysis therein, and the praxis of these theories.  By bringing together scholars from diverse intellectual traditions, this workshop will explore an emerging field that builds a more critical analytical framework in international relations.  The significance of this workshop lies in breaking down the hierarchical structures and concepts, “unsettling” state authority within the inter-state system, and being attentive to multiple/plural ways of being in the world.  As an intersection between the academy inquiry and activism (theory and practice), the examination of the legacies of colonial power relations toward the visioning of post-imperial futures and the potentiality for improving global relations are empowering of indigenous nations and cultural and political communities.  This venture research workshop will focus on interdisciplinary examination of transversal feminist, indigenous, and anarchist struggles (relations that transverse the boundaries of, within and between nations and states) and the ways in which they are prefiguring alternative and innovative political practices in their/our global locale(s).

Final Workshop Report

• PDF File (download)

Workshop Participants:

• Jacqueline Lasky, University of Hawai’i, Manoa (paper, PDF file)
• Richard Day, Queen’s University (paper, PDF file)
• Todd May, Clemson University (paper, PDF file)
• Kathy Ferguson, University of Hawai’i, Manoa (paper, PDF file)
• Nevzat Soguk, University of Hawai’i, Manoa (paper, PDF file)
• Andrea Smith, University of Michigan (paper, PDF file)
• Glen Coulthard, University of Victoria
• Makere Stewart-Harawira, University of Alberta
• J. Marshall Beier, McMaster University
• Jason Adams, University of Hawai’i, Manoa (paper, PDF file)
• Noelani Goodyear-Ka’opua, University of Hawai’i, Manoa (paper, PDF file)
• Alex Khasnabish, Dalhousie University

This workshop is sold out. Thank you for your interest.

Framing a Research Frontier

Cyberinfrastructure Policy in Global Perspective
Workshop Chair: Nanette Levinson, American University
Location: San Francisco Hilton,    Yosemite A   
Time: Tuesday, March 25, 2008, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

Cyberinfrastructure policy is still in its infancy, somewhat similar to where Internet-related policy was a decade ago. There has been very little theoretically grounded social science research on this topic; and scant treatment regarding the role of developing nations or of non-state actors. A review of the last two years’ paper abstracts at the Annual Meetings of the ISA and the APSA indicates no papers using the term ‘Cyberinfrastructure’. The purpose of this Workshop, then, is to contribute to shaping a whole new generation of communication technology policy research— multidisciplinary works that benefit from some of ISA’s most innovative thinkers and theories and from models in related areas such as internet governance, international trade and finance, and international health and environmental issues. Participants will also consider and identify appropriate research methods and levels of analyses.

Workshop Participants:

• Derrick Cogburn, Syracuse University
• Maura Conway, Dublin City University, Ireland
• Elisabeth Hanson, University of Connecticut
• Nanette Levinson, American University
• Elena Pavan, University of Trento, Italy
• Ken Rogerson, Duke University
• Laura Roselle, Elon Universit

Registration has closed. Thank you for your interest.