We hope that, wherever you are, you are keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you, including:
- Our Annual Conference: Call for Papers/Blogs
- Undergraduate Essay Competition: Closing Date Approaching
- Changes to the Team: Goodbye to Marc and Hello to Stephen
- Recently on the Blog
If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.
Best wishes,
Stephen (@Stephen_R_Bates), Louise (@LouiseVThompson), Gavin (@GavinHart10), Seán (@S_Haughey) and, for the last time, Marc (@marcgeddes)
1. Our Annual Conference: Call for Papers/Blogs
We are delighted to announce that this year’s annual conference will be held in Birmingham in the city’s Council House on the 12th and 13th November 2020.
The theme for this year’s conference is Parliaments in 20/20 Vision, allowing us to reflect upon the impact on legislatures of this year’s unprecedented events and to think about the past, present and future of parliaments and parliamentary studies.
Please see our website for our call for papers and for full details of the conference, which is co-sponsored by the School of Government at the University of Birmingham.
2. Undergraduate Essay Competition: Closing Date Approaching
If you have been marking parliamentary studies essays over the last few weeks (or know someone who has), please remember that the closing date of Friday 29 May 2020 for submitting essays to our annual competition is fast approaching.
We are very grateful to Professor Robert Hazell for agreeing to chair this year’s essay competition. Alongside him on the panel this year will be Adam Evans (UK Parliament) and Dr Louise Thompson (University of Manchester).
Essays must be no more than 3500 words and can focus on any legislature. More details can be found here.
3. Changes to the Team: Goodbye from Marc and Hello from Stephen
After five years helping to run the group, Marc Geddes is stepping down as co-convenor and is being replaced by Stephen Holden Bates. Please see below for messages from our outgoing and incoming convenors.
Dear group members,
It’s been an absolute pleasure to have been co-convening this group with Louise and others for over three years (and being Communications Officer for two years before that!). At our last annual conference (November, in Cardiff), I begun to think that it is time for me to step down. The announcement was due at the PSA Conference, but this didn’t work out for obvious reasons.
This group has contributed so much to my thinking and development – not only feedback on papers, but also feeling part of an intellectual community. It’s wonderful to see the diverse research on parliaments in the UK and beyond. I’m very grateful that I’ve been able to support the group and thank you to everyone involved for making it such a huge success.
Stephen Holden Bates has agreed to take over from me, and I have now handed over all responsibilities. I am looking forward to seeing the group continue to grow and participate in future events. All best for the future!
Marc
Dear All
First, I would like to thank Marc for all his excellent work on the group over the last five years. I am very excited (and also a little nervous) about taking over from him as a convenor of this group because, not only is PSA Parliaments one of the largest PSA specialist groups, it has also been one of the best run and friendliest groups, first under Cristina and Louise and latterly under Louise and Marc. My ambition is for all this to continue and, as such, any changes will be evolutionary and not revolutionary.
For those who don’t know me, I’m a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Birmingham and my main research interests concern parliamentary committees and parliamentary questions.
If you have any suggestions about how we can make the group even more successful, please do not hesitate to contact me (s.r.bates@bham.ac.uk) and I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at our annual conference in the autumn (or whenever we’re allowed to hold such events).
Best wishes
Stephen
4. Recently on the Blog
Thanks again for the great contributions made to our blog by group members and from our wider network of scholars and policy-makers. Some of our recent blogs include:
- Bedding Down, Treading Water and Taking Two Steps Forward: Gender Equality and the 2019-20 House of Commons Select Committee Elections – Stephen Holden Bates, Stephen McKay, Mark Goodwin
- No quarantine for democracy: How parliaments can uphold accountability for the emergency powers granted to the executive – Franklin De Vrieze
- Social distancing meets political distancing: scrutiny in a digital parliament – David Judge
- An Unhealthy Scrutiny? – Stephen Holden Bates
If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study please get in touch with our communications officer Gavin Hart or message us on Twitter (@psa_parl).