Hello everyone,
A quick newsletter today. Please see information below on the following:
- Our events at 2016 PSA annual conference
- Our plans for 2016
- Essay competition
- On the blog
- Committee inquiries
- Impact conference at Warwick
If you have any notices/messages that you would like us to circulate to the group, let us know – it could be about disseminating an event, new research, new publication, etc. Please avoid sending attachments. Where possible, we would prefer circulating more substantive information through web links instead.
Best wishes,
Cristina (@estrangeirada), Louise (@LouiseVThompson) and Marc (@marcgeddes)
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1. Our events at 2016 PSA annual conference
The PSA annual conference is fast approaching and our specialist group schedule for this year looks even busier than last year. We have six confirmed specialist group panels taking place on Tuesday, 22 March and Wednesday, 23 March, along with our annual business meeting (AGM) on the Tuesday lunchtime. We will finish off the Wednesday with a special lunchtime event on “Research, Impact and Parliament”, kindly delivered by Caroline Kenny from the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST). The full schedule has not yet been confirmed, so we will be in touch with full details as soon as these are known.
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2. Our plans for 2016
We’re very pleased to announce that our proposed plans for 2016 were approved by the PSA. Our plans include:
A specialist group annual lecture to take place in June/July. If you have any ideas of a speaker for this or of a location for this, please get in touch with us.
A series of small workshops focused on methodology for PhD students working in legislative studies. Each workshop should be aimed for a very small number of PhD students and focus on specific methodology issues within legislative studies. These workshops can take place anywhere in the country. The specialist group will contribute towards the travel of PhD students wishing to attend one of these workshops. If you would like to run one of these workshops, please let us know.
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3. Essay competition
As many of you have no doubt now finished marking some fantastic work on Parliament, don’t forget our essay competition. Full details here. This comes with a prize of £150.00. Last year’s winner was presented the award in the House of Commons by the Clerk of the House.
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4. On the blog
Latest on our blog:
- Mary Creagh has become the new chair of the Environmental Audit Committee: Will she be a catalyst or a chieftain?, by Marc Geddes (Sheffield)
- “Emotionally felt, without footnotes”, – the importance of narrative within symbolic representation, affective connections and Parliamentary Outreach, by Alex Prior (Leeds)
- The Stratchlyde recommendations are based on a false premise that there is a convention that the Lords does not reject Statutory Instruments, by Lord Norton of Louth (Hull)
- Too Much Shredded Wheat? Leadership and the lessons of prime ministerial resignations, by Kinglsey Purdam, Dave Richards and Nick Turnbull (Manchester)
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5. Select committee inquiries
- Evaluation of the EVEL arrangements, by the Procedure Committee (HoC)
- Private Members’ Bills, by the Procedure Committee (HoC)
- Inter-institutional relations in the UK, by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (HoC)
- Response to the Strathclyde Review, by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (HoL)
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6. Impact conference at Warwick
The University of Warwick Politics and IR Department is hosting a conference on the future of the Impact agenda in the UK. With preparations for the next REF already underway, this is an opportune moment to have a profession-wide discussion about impact, with contributions from political scientists, funding bodies, HEFCE, and a broad range of other non-academic constituencies. We think that this inter-disciplinary event may be of interests to the members of the PSA Parliaments and Legislatures group. We want this to be a full discussion with as many different positions and opinions being brought forward as possible. Conference registration and calls for papers is available here.
The deadline for proposals is 15 March 2016. All queries should be directed to local organisers via Davinia Hoggarth (d.hoggarth@warwick.ac.uk).
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