Centre for the Study of Democracy Seminar Series Spring 2022

University of Westminster

We are excited to announce the speakers for the CSD Spring 2022 Seminar Series.

The Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster is organising a full programme of research seminars with visiting speakers this semester. Events take place on Tuesdays 4-5.30pm, either online, or in the Westminster Forum, Level 5, 32-38 Wells Street, University of Westminster, W1T 3UW. All are welcome to attend the seminars but registration is required.Please note that for in person events, places are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first serve basis. For the online events, once you book your ticket, a link to the talk will be sent to you closer to the date.<h3>The programme:</h3><h3>Tuesday 8 February 2022, Online – 3pm (earlier start)</h3>Paola Rivetti (Dublin City University)‘Revolution and Counter-Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa: Implications for Democracy’This talk will offer some preliminary reflections on the transformations of democracy as a system of norms and institutions which regulate the exercise of power. The analysis of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary politics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region sheds useful light on how models of democratic governance have been transforming, resonating transnationally. Building on the scholarship on regime types, democratic backsliding and centring the epistemological ruptures that the uprisings in the region have caused in the context of the debates among Area studies scholars, the goal of this paper is to highlight the important contribution that Area studies can make to disciplinary debates.Dr Paola Rivetti is an Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at Dublin City University. Her research interests include comparative perspectives on the government of societies and polities in the Middle East and North Africa; social and political mobilisations; and sexual politics and technology in the region. Most recently, she has published Political Participation in Iran from Khatami to the Green Movement (Palgrave, 2020).<h3>Wednesday 23 February 2022, in person in Westminster Forum - 4pm</h3>Martina Tazzioli (London Goldsmiths)‘Border abolitionism: Migration, containment and the memory of struggles and rescue'This presentation develops a border abolitionist perspective to migration governmentality, with a specific focus on the confinement continuum that those racialised as “migrants” are subjected to. It starts by taking stock of the partially missed encounter between critical critical migration scholarship and carceral abolitionist literature. It shows that an abolitionist perspective enables tracing connections between interlocking forms of racialisation and, at the same time, building transversal alliances of solidarity. It moves on by challenging mechanisms of migration confinement beyond what Ruth Gilmore defined as “the politics of white innocence”. It concludes by interrogating what a critical knowledge of the border regime might mean in a context characterised by states’ blatant violations of the international law. Martina Tazzioli is Lecturer in Politics &amp; Technology at Goldsmiths. She is the author of The Making of Migration. The biopoltics of mobility at Europe’s borders (Sage, 2020), Spaces of Governmentality: Autonomous Migration and the Arab Uprisings (2015) and co-author of Tunisia as a Revolutionised Space of Migration (2016). She is co-editor in Chief of the journal Politics and part of the editorial collective of Radical Philosophy.<h3>Tuesday 8 March 2022, online - 4pm</h3>Nivi Machanda (Queen Mary University)‘The Politics of Border Abolition: Temsula Ao and the Northeast Borderlands of India’This paper investigates the incursions of the Indian state into what are often called its ‘northeast borderlands’. It uses Temsula Ao’s ethnographic, political, and literary work to complicate understandings of both ‘the border’ and ‘intervention’. Ao is one of the most prominent writers of comtemporary Nagaland. Born when the Naga Hills were still administered by the British, Ao grew up when the Indian government drew ever more elaborate schemes to control and taxonomise the region, she has borne witness, in both her lived experienced and her scholarship, to the changing political landscape of the Naga Hills. Through a tarrying with Ao’s work, the paper interrogates the multiple resonances of intervention – colonial, postcolonial, invasive, and cursory to explore the ways in which intervention is experienced, theorised and resisted in border regions.Dr Nivi Manchanda is a Senior Lecturer in International Politics at Queen Mary University. Nivi’s research interests include post- and de-colonial theoretical approaches to the study of world politics. She is especially interested in the ways in which knowledge is produced and the raced, classed and gendered nature of both ‘expertise’ and ‘common-sense’. Her latest book is Imagining Afghanistan: the History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 2020).<h3>Tuesday 22 March 2022, in person, Room 358, 309 Regent St, W1B 2HW- 4pm</h3>Patrick Williams (Manchester Metropolitan University)‘Objectively justified: racial disparity as the inevitable consequence of criminal injustice’Dr Patrick Williams undertakes research and publishes in the area of 'race' and ethnicity, with a particular focus on racial disparity, disproportionality and differential treatment within the Criminal Justice System. His most recent projects include the (over)policing of gang suspects and the misconstrued associations under joint enterprise laws of black people who are (police) identified as involved with serious violence. <h3>Tuesday 5 April 2022, online - 4pm</h3>Alexander Barder (Florida International University)‘Global Race War: International Politics and Racial Hierarchy’In this recently published book, Alexander Barder shows how specific racial imaginaries have, over the past two centuries, cut across politically defined state boundaries to legitimate practices of genocidal violence against so-called "enemy races." Barder traces the emergence of this global racial hierarchy from the early 19th century to the present to explain how a historical racial global order unraveled over the first half of the 20th century, continued during the Cold War, and reemerged during the Global War on Terror. Imperial, racial, and geopolitical orders intersected over time in ways that violently tore apart the imperial and sovereign state system and continue to haunt politics today. Global histories of racial hierarchy and violence have important implications for understanding the continued salience of race within Western polities.Dr Alexander Barder is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations at Florida International University. Previously, he was Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut. His main research focuses on historical and contemporary forms of international hierarchy, imperialism, and war. His book ‘Global Race War: International Politics and Racial Hierarchy’ was published last year by Oxford University Press.

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Centre for the Study of Democracy Seminar Series Spring 2022

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Centre for the Study of Democracy Seminar Series Spring 2022

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