We hope you have settled well and truly into the new year and the snow isn’t causing too many headaches.
In this month’s newsletter, we have the following announcements/information:
- Reminder: #PSA19 registration now open
- Survey results
- Essay competition 2019 reminder
- Methods workshop
- News from our members: congrats Dr Sean Haughey!
- Possible event: “Parliamentary Leadership”
- Recently on our blog
If you have any notices / messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know (including events, new research projects, grants, publications, etc.). Or other ideas for the group and feedback for us, they’re welcome too!
Best wishes,
Marc (@marcgeddes), Louise (@LouiseVThompson) Alex (@A_Meakin) and Seán (@S_Haughey)
1. REMINDER: PSA19 registration now open
The PSA’s annual international conference will take place in Nottingham, 15-17 April 2019.
Registration is now OPEN and early bird registration has been extended. Take advantage of the offer and find out all about registration by clicking here.
For those interested in what the PSA Parliaments Group has got to offer, we have submitted six panels on the following themes:
- Strengthening Parliamentary Democracy
- Parliaments and Policy Making in Comparative Perspective
- Opening Up Parliament: From public claims to expert knowledge
- UK Parliament: How does history inform he future?
- Legislation and Brexit
- Researching Parliament (with HoC Academic Fellows)
Full details, including individual papers, are available on our website – please click here. Further details will be provided as and when they come available.
2. Survey results
Just a quick message to update you from our survey, which was mostly positive about our conference, but did have some notes for improvements (particularly around organisation of catering). We discussed the results in our most recent group meeting and will take them on board.
One key question in our survey was about our conference in 2019. The vast majority of suggestions were for Cardiff/National Assembly for Wales. This will be our first choice and we have started organisation. We will formally announce details of our next conference at the PSA.
3. Essay competition 2019 reminder
Did you have an outstanding student from autumn 2018 that might deserve a prize for their academic work? Look no further and consider submitting their essay to our undergraduate essay competition, which is now open!
The winner will be presented with a prize of £100 and the runner-up with a prize of £50. The winners for 2018 were presented the award by Professor Cristina Leston-Bandeira at our annual conference in Belfast. Previous winners have also been awarded by the Clerk of the House of Commons and the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament. The deadline is 31 May, with a 3,500 word limit.
All of the details about the competition can be found on our webpage.
4. Methods workshop
We have started planning our methods workshop, aimed primarily at early career academics/researchers, but don’t let that stop you!
We are currently exploring venue options, dates and times. We are also considering possible researchers that might be interested in leading one or more session.
If you would like to contribute to the workshop, please get in touch. We are looking for anyone that has experience of using qualitative methods, such as interviews, focus groups, observation, content/textual analysis, discourse analysis, etc. We would reimburse your expenses as best we can.
If you are interested in contributing to the workshop, please email louise.thompson-4@manchester.ac.uk. Thank you in advance!
5. News from our members: congrats Dr Seán Haughey!
We are very pleased to announce that our Treasurer, Dr Seán Haughey, passed his viva on 22 January.
His thesis explores legislative behaviour in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Some of his insights have been published in a previous blog post that you can read here.
On behalf of the whole PSA Parliaments Group: congratulations to Sean and we wish him all the very best for his future academic career.
If you have any notices/messages/news that you would like us to circulate to the group, then please let us know!
6. Possible event: “Parliamentary Leadership”
The PSA Parliaments Group is tentatively exploring a possible academic event/workshop to explore leadership in parliaments, such as the changing role of the Speaker, chairs of committees, or other institutional actors.
We intend to work on this issue with the PSA specialist group on Political Leadership. We are at a very early stage of coming up with ideas, so we have very few details about it. But if you are currently working in this area and would like to be involved, please drop a line to marc.geddes@ed.ac.uk. Thank you.
9. Recently on the blog
Some of our recent blogs include:
- Governing under pressure? James Weinberg (Sheffield)
- Why can’t some select committees get a female witness? Stephen Bates (Birmingham), Marc Geddes (Edinburgh), Mark Goodwin (Coventry), Steve McKay (Lincoln) – and Isaac Bates, age 8
- Constitutional scrutiny by parliamentary committee Eloise Ellis (UEA)
- Explaining the e-Petititons process to the public Catherine Bochel (Lincoln)
- Choosing to stand: What makes women run for Parliament? Emmeline Ledgerwood (Leicester)
If you are interested in publishing a blog, please get in touch with our Communications Officer Alexandra Meakin (a.meakin@sheffield.ac.uk) for a chat about how to get involved.