Forthcoming events
Some of the larger events such as the conferences and the seminar series have their own dedicated pages. You can find these by clicking on one of the bars in the box on the left hand side of this page. All the other events are listed below
31 August 2010
Overflows: Flows, Doings, Edges III
An informal workshop on doing a relational PhD- St Hugh's College Oxford
The workshop will consist of three sessions held between 11.00 and 17.00 at St Hugh's College, led by students who are either working on, or have recently finished their doctoral studies.
If you are interested in participating in the workshop, please send us a short paragraph introducing yourself and your work, and an overflow for the discussion – if you would like to share one. Please also include 2-3 questions related to your doctoral research. These could include methodological issues, theoretical tensions or other practical problems/questions you have encountered whilst doing a relational PhD.
There is no additional registration fee for the workshop, but places are limited, so please write to us before 31 July 2010 at overflowsworkshop@gmail.com .
For more information click here31 August- September 2010
CRESC Annual Conference - The Social Life Of Methods
Confirmed speakers: Nicholas Dirks (Columbia University); Katie King (University of Maryland); Patti Lather (Ohio State University) ; John Law (CRESC, The Open University); Celia Lury (Goldsmiths, University of London); Donald Mackenzie (University of Edinburgh); Mark Peel (University of Liverpool); Engin Isin (The Open University); Andrew Abbott (University of Chicago)
16- 17 September 2010
Studying Elites: Theory, Evidence, Pratice
Venue:
Old Park Hotel, Buxton
The final seminar in this series will be organised by the University of Manchester on 16/17 September 2010. The conference is being held at the Old Hall Hotel in Buxton, which can be easily reached by train. (http://www.oldhallhotelbuxton.co.uk/ )
A major purpose of this seminar is to give opportunities for younger scholars to present their work and we have a very interesting collection of papers from PhD students, post-docs and others.
In addition we will also be able to host the three speakers who were unable to present at the previous seminar:
Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, VU University Amsterdam, Department of Political Science: ‘European Corporate Elites’
Francois-Xavier Dudouet (IRISSO-CNRS, Paris Dauphine), Eric Gremont (OPESC, Paris) and Antoine Vion, Universite de la Mediterranee: ‘Core Business in the Eurozone’
Eleni Tsingou (Centre for the Study of Globalization and Regionalization, Warwick): ‘Power Elites: Club Model Politics and the Construction of Global Financial Governance’
For more information click here
24-25 September 2010
The Post-Crash City - theories, policies, and prospects for urban communities in the wake of the global financial crisis a symposium-Call for paper
For the programme for Post Crash City please click here
Venue: TBC
The Post-Crash City - theories, policies, and prospects for urban communities in the wake of the global financial crisis
a symposium, University of Manchester, September 24-25, 2010
The event is hosted by the University of Manchester and supported by the Hallsworth Fund, the Institute for Political and Economic Governance (IPEG), and the ESRC Centre for Economic and Social Change (CRESC).
The financial crisis of 2007-2009 is the biggest shock to have hit the global economy since the Great Depression.
The collapse and government takeover or rescue of leading international financial institutions in the US and Europe pointed to a systemic failure of ‘sophisticated self-regulating markets’ which was an essential component of the Greenspan doctrine of fiscal laissez-faire that underpinned not only US economic policy but that of the international financial community as whole.
But if the events of recent years point to a global crisis in the operation of the international finance system, the crisis has a much longer history and much wider implications than the investment-banking sector.
At the heart of this broader crisis of global capitalism are cities, and the billions of people who now live and work in them.
Nearly all US sub-prime mortgage loans were sold to low-income urban and suburban householders. High levels of business failures and unemployment are compounding an already difficult situation for city administrations that face record levels of debt and heavily reduced tax revenues. Federal and national governments appear to lack the will or the resources to ‘bail out the cities’ in the way they have the banks and ‘strategically important’ corporations.
As national governments gear up for a sustained period of major retrenchment which will impact heavily on public services and those dependent on public sector jobs and contracts in the world’s towns and cities, this symposium will explore whether we are entering a new phase in the governance and political life of cities in which both state-centric and market-centric models are seen as inadequate to the challenges that cities and their populations face in the decades ahead.
The symposium will therefore focus on three key themes:
- What impact has the global financial crisis had particularly on ‘second tier’ cities and urban regions such as Manchester and the North-West of England?
- How is the crisis of private capital investment and public sector spending cuts affecting the governance and economic viability of cities?
- What are the actually existing alternatives to market-based urban governance in different national contexts and what are the prospects for a wider diffusion of alternative models in the core economies of the United Kingdom and the United States?
Areas of focus might include (but are not limited to) the following: housing, planning and the built environment; the arts and cultural policy; political ecology and urban sustainability; the media and communication; transport; education; health and well-being; community building and local democracy; crime and security; urban and regional labour markets; banking , financial services and investment; and urban and regional regeneration.
Presentations are particularly invited on how different scales of governance in Greater Manchester and the North-West region and urban and regional stakeholders are addressing the crisis as well as comparative analyses of the response of ‘second tier’ cities to the crash. Presentations that explore the impact of the crisis on more vulnerable urban residents including those on low incomes; single parent households; refugees and migrants; young people not in employment, education or training; the long term unemployed; older and retired people; people with disabilities, and those with long term health problems are also strongly encouraged.
For the purposes of the symposium we are not expecting formal, developed papers, but rather workshop style interventions of no more than 20 minutes duration that draw on existing research in progress or which prospect new avenues for enquiry. We are particularly keen to encourage inter-disciplinary collaborations, and especially inter-faculty collaborations, between researchers in the arts and humanities, social sciences and science, technology, mathematics and engineering.
We also hope to publish a selection of the presentations as part of a new Manchester Papers research series that will be of interest to the broader policy community, the business sector, trade unions, NGOs, media bodies and the public at large, as well as fellow academics.
Enquiries and expressions of interest should be directed no later than Monday 2 August 2010 to, Dr Simon Parker, Hallsworth Visiting Professor in Political Economy, CRESC, 178 Waterloo Place, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL. Email simon.parker@manchester.ac.uk
6 October 2010
CRESC Visuality & Power programme- Seminar
Venue: Rm 006, Gardiner building, The Open University
The seminar will bring together CRESC members and others at the OU interested in drawing - including Steve Garner, Director of The Drawing Research Network (http://www.simcoe.co.uk/drawing/), and members of the OU Design Group. The seminar will give us a chance to introduce our interests in this area and begin think about how we might develop future possible collaborations.
Partly the seminar is motivated by the sense in which drawing constitutes perhaps the most 'basic', 'minimal' and 'simple' visual practice, and yet is often overlooked in work in the social sciences and humanities on 'the visual'.
At the same time, a further area some of us are interested in is the use of drawings - particularly children's drawings - as evidence in conflict situations.
Don't feel the seminar is limited by these areas though - we're interested in exploring drawing far more broadly.
If you are interested in attending the seminar, or have further questions about it - please email me at a.hill@open.ac.uk
11-12 November 2010
Conference - Jazz and Race, Past and Present.
CRESC in associating with the AHRC project What is Black British Jazz?
Keynote speaker: Guthrie Ramsey, Professor of Music, University of Pennsylvania and author of Race Music:Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop (2003).
Conference convenors are Catherine Tackley, What is Black British Jazz? The Open University; Jason Toynbee, What is Black British Jazz? The Open University; Tony Whyton, Salford University; Nicholas Gebhardt, Lancaster University.
20-22 January 2011
EastBordNet conference 2011
Remaking Borders
Venue: Catania, Sicily
CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Deadline: 30th July 2010
Individual Paper Proposal Form
Panel Proposal Form
Call for Proposals PDF
Borders, it seems, are never what they used to be: every period and place generates a sense that this is the moment when the borders changed. Commentary on today’s contemporary moment in the European region is no exception, and there is plenty of material to discuss: the end of the Cold War; the violent break-up of Former Yugoslavia; the expansion of the European Union; the European integration process; the political aftermath of September 11th 2001; the development of digital technologies; the rise of undocumented migration and people-trafficking; intense debates about gender, sexuality and religious faith; the multiple moral and material shifts implied by what many call “the neoliberal turn,” including the recent financial meltdown. The list could go on; once again then, borders are not what they used to be.
A question here is whether this incessant shifting of borders is a characteristic of borders as such (what could be called the ‘border-ness’ of borders), or alternatively, whether borders are the outcome of something else: the idea that borders are a symptom – that they appear, disappear and change shape, location and meaning in line with activities, relations, conflicts, ideas, and regulations that come together, leaving their particular mark as borders until something else comes along. So, how to think about the making and remaking of borders, both literally and metaphorically, is as important to explore as the idea that borders are never what they used to be.
This conference aims to draw together researchers working on these issues in both conceptual and empirical terms. There will be a focus, though not exclusively, on the eastern peripheries of Europe, loosely defined: given that the location of these borders is currently undergoing revision, part of the aim of the conference is to understand where the eastern peripheries are heading, rather than assuming their location. There will also be a focus on exploring people’s everyday experiences of the separations, movements, connections and relocations that involve borders – which can be both formal and informal, and located at the centre as well as at the edges of places, and in the mind, on maps or in paperwork as much as in the landscape. This focus on the everyday helps to explore the cumulative effect of thousands of individually insignificant details that add up to something important, but are often neglected in favour of accounts of big events that appear to change everything in a moment. Some panels will be devoted to particular themes: money and finance, time, gender and sexuality, movement and travel, documents and technologies, visibility and invisibility, amongst others. These themes are intended to draw out different aspects of the social, moral, and material aspects of remaking borders; they have already formed a focus of attention for researchers in EastBordNet, through a series of workshops and work groups.
In conceptual terms, the conference aims to explore the diversity of approaches towards thinking about border, whether this concerns geo-political borders or more abstract notions of border and related concepts, such as difference, travel, exchange, translation.
Proposals for both individual papers and panels, from any disciplinary perspective, that address these issues are invited. There are some panels which will follow the themes of the EastBordNet workshops and work groups; other topics can be suggested by applicants.
Please return your proposals by 30 July 2010 to: costconference@manchester.ac.uk
21 January 2011
CRESC Annual Lecture, Is Urban Sustainability Possible in the Age of Climate Justice
Venue: Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre
Speaker: Andrew Ross