Category Archives: security

First SOURCE Roundtable: Methods and the international

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The Research Centre in International Relations will hold the 1st SOURCE roundtable on Wednesday 5th November 2014, 10 :00 – 12 :00. at the War studies meeting room, 6th Floor King’s Building, Strand Campus, King’s college London.

SOURCE is a European Community funded project dealing with societal security in Europe. Within this framework, a team of researchers at KCL is currently designing methodological principles to map out the professions and institutions in charge of securing society in Europe. The first roundtable will discuss how methods construct different understandings of the international. It will link the concrete aspects of contacting actors and collecting observations with the challenge of restoring the sociological and anthropological dimensions of international practice. Anna Leander will open the debate with a short presentation of her own experience in researching the public-private nexus of security. She is a Professor at the Copenhagen Business School (Department for Management, Politics and Philosophy), a Visiting Professor at Institute of International Relations, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro and a Core team member of CRIC (Centre for the Resolution of International Conflict, http://cric.ku.dk/).

Roundtable participants are: Claudia Aradau, Didier Bigo, Vivienne Jabri, Anna Leander, Médéric Martin-Mazé.

All are welcome to attend. For more details please email kclrcir@kcl.ac.uk

The International in Security

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by Pinar Bilgin, Bilkent University

In what follows, I start out by telling the story of Ottoman Sultan Abdülaziz’s visit to the 1867 Paris World Fair. I chose this story because it allows me to tease out—what I term—‘the international in security’. Studying ‘the international in security’ refers inquiring into the ways in which others’ conceptions of the international shape their insecurities and/or conceptions of security. While security as viewed through the lenses of European great powers and later the United States has shaped the study of security, insecurities as experienced and/or conceptualised in the rest of the world did not always find their way into our studies. Let me begin with the story of the Ottoman Sultan before suggesting the need for inquiring into ‘the international in security’.

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POSTPONE Inaugural Workshop 21st of March, King’s College London

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On 21st of March the Research Centre in International Relations hosted the inaugural workshop for the newly created cross-national PhD research network POSTPONE (Postgraduate Poststructural Research Network)at King’s College London’s Strand campus. Continue reading →

Celtic, Sport and the Attempted Depoliticisation of Collective Space

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by Alister Wedderburn

Parkhead, Glasgow, 26 November 2013: as Celtic and AC Milan run through the formalities before kick-off, one corner of the grand, sold-out stadium begins to unfurl a series of banners. They are in the section occupied by the Green Brigade, the home side’s ‘ultra’ group, and even by the immoderate standards of Glasgow’s football-centric sectarianism, [1] they are provocative. There is a portrait of William Wallace, and another of Bobby Sands, the IRA soldier and 1981 hunger striker. Accompanying them is a lyric from ‘Terrorist or Dreamer’ by Provisional IRA commander-turned-songwriter Bik McFarlane, Sands’ commanding officer in the Maze prison. [2]

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Mass Electronic Surveillance, Security and Rights in Liberal Democracies panel discussion at RCIR

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Snapshot of Boundless Informant global heat map of data collection. The color scheme ranges from green (least subjected to surveillance) through yellow and orange to red (most surveillance). Note the '2007' date in the image relates to the document from which the interactive map derives its top secret classification, not to the map itself.

Snapshot of Boundless Informant global heat map of data collection. Color scheme ranges from green (least subjected to surveillance) through yellow and orange to red (most surveillance). The ‘2007’ date in the image relates to the document from which the interactive map derives its top secret classification, not to the map itself. Source here.

21st January 2014, 630pm, Safra Lecture Theatre, Strand Campus.Please be prompt as seats are first come, first served.

The Research Centre in International Relations in the Department of War Studies will host a panel discussion on revelations relating to mass electronic surveillance and its implications for civil liberties and rights.

Speakers include Sir David Omand (former Head of GCHQ and Visiting Professor in the Department of War Studies), Ben Emmerson QC (Mr. Ben Emmerson, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, and Matrix Chambers), Professor Didier Bigo (Department of War Studies and Sciences Po, Paris), and chairing, Professor Vivienne Jabri (Department of War Studies, head of RCIR).

The event is at the Edmond J. Safra Lecture Theatre, King’s College London Strand Campus, Strand, London WC2R 2LS. Directions here. Continue reading →

Podcast: Prof. Karin Fierke at RCIR

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Political Self Sacrifice: Agency, Body and Emotion in International Relations

In this podcast, following from her talk at RCIR, Professor Karin Fierke discusses with Dr. Peter Busch (War Studies, KCL) her latest book: Political Self Sacrifice: Agency, Body and Emotion in International Relations, published by Cambridge University Press, for more information please click here.

This event took place on 15th November 2013, War Studies Meeting Room (K6.07) Strand Campus, King’s College London. You can read her original article on RCIR Forum here.

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SAPIENT Policy Meeting and EIRSS Summer School, 2-13 September 2013

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By Isabel Rocha de Siqueira and Emma Mc Cluskey

In September 2013, the Research Centre for International Relations at King’s College London (RCIR-KCL), the SAPIENT project, coordinated by Prof. Didier Bigo (KCL), and the University of Kent, in Brussels, organised two parallel events in Brussels: a Policy Meeting on Smart Borders, sponsored by the SAPIENT project; and a Summer School on Security, Borders and Mobility, held at the University of Kent. This post on the RCIR Forum provides us with the opportunity to make podcasts and information from both events publicly available.

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