We hope that, wherever you are, you are keeping safe and well and that you had a good summer. We have a bumper number of updates for you, including:
- Our annual conference
- 2021 PSA Annual Conference, Belfast
- Changes to the PSA Parliaments team
- Website revamp
- Essay prize winners announced
- Supporting colleagues on precarious contracts
- Jobs and internships
- Other Events and Call for Papers
- Recently on the Blog
- Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye
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), Alexandra (@A_Meakin), Seán (@S_Haughey), Gavin (@GavinHart10) and Caroline (@CarolineBha)
1. 2020 PSA Parliaments Annual Conference
Unfortunately, we have had to postpone this year’s annual conference because of the pandemic. Instead, we intend to run a series of monthly on-line panels throughout the academic year. More details as soon as the timetable is finalised!
2. 2021 PSA Annual Conference, Belfast: Call for Papers
The 2021 PSA Annual Conference will be held in Belfast with a theme of “Resilience. Expertise. Hope” . It will be a hybrid event which will, apparently, “blend the digital and physical worlds together to produce the opportunities and interactions of a physical conference, with the added accessibility of an online event”. Full details of the conference can be found here.
PSA Parliaments can host up to 8 panels at the conference.
If you would like to present a paper or organise a panel under the auspices of the PSA Parliaments group, then please submit the relevant form(s) to Alexandra and Stephen by Monday 5th October.
We welcome papers from PhD students through to professors and we are fully committed to avoiding manels.
3. Changes to the PSA Parliaments Team: Thank you Louise and welcome back Alexandra!
After 6 years, Louise Thompson has stepped down from convening the PSA Parliaments Group. We want to say a huge thank you to Louise for all her incredible work rebuilding the group and taking it to award-winning heights. Louise has been central to growing the membership of the group, creating a welcoming and stimulating atmosphere, co-editing Exploring Parliament and leading on the group’s Essay Competition and conferences. Thank you Louise!
Louise will be replaced by Alexandra Meakin, who was previously the group’s communications officer. Alexandra completed her PhD at the University of Sheffield on parliamentary governance and the Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster at the end of 2019 and is returning from maternity leave this month to work as a Research Assistant on Louise Thompson’s ESRC project ‘Rethinking the role of small parties in the UK’s parliaments’, in addition to continuing to research Restoration and Renewal. Prior to starting her doctoral studies, Alexandra spent over a decade working for MPs and the House of Commons. Follow her on Twitter.
4. Website Revamp!
As some of you may have already noticed, we have not only revamped our website but we have also got a new address: psaparliaments.org
As part of the revamp, we have put all of our overviews of parliaments and legislatures onto two maps. If you would like to contribute an overview for a jurisdiction that is not yet covered, then please email Alexandra or Stephen.
We are especially keen to have overviews for the parliaments and legislatures in the British Isles that are not yet covered (for example, Jersey and the Isle of Man). It is also to our great shame that we do not have an overview of the UK Houses of Parliament on our website yet.
We have also launched an Ask an Expert service which is your chance to ask (and maybe answer) questions about any aspect of parliamentary activity.
A prize (yet to be determined) will be awarded to whomsoever is the first person to correctly identify the ten legislatures featured in the black and white photos at the top of each of the main pages (this doesn’t include the photo on the Annual Conference page which is of the Council House in the greatest city in the world, Birmingham). Two clues to get you started: not all the buildings are still in existence and there is at least one legislature from each continent (excluding Antarctica).
5. Undergraduate Essay Competition Prize Winners Announced!
We are pleased to announce that Jessica Rose, formerly of the University of Birmingham, is the winner of our 2020 essay competition.
Professor Robert Hazell, chair of this year’s judging panel, praised the winning essay for its focus ‘on an original topic, with detailed research and analysis, beautifully presented in the form of a Briefing Paper from the House of Commons Library’.
We also extend our congratulations to Joshua Funnell, formerly of Royal Holloway, University of London, who was this year’s runner-up.
The judging panel commended Joshua’s essay, noting that it focussed ‘on an interesting topic, MPs’ use of Facebook and Twitter, and the analysis convincingly showed that MPs use different social media for different purposes’.
All essays were anonymised and judged by a panel of academics and practitioners: Professor Robert Hazell (University College London and Chair of the Panel), Dr Adam Evans (House of Commons) and Dr Louise Thompson (University of Manchester).
6. Supporting Colleagues on Precarious Contracts
The pandemic has had an impact on all of us but perhaps especially those colleagues who are on, or who were on, precarious contracts. PSA Parliaments would like to offer as much help as possible to those colleagues over the coming months. As a starting point, we hope to be able to offer:
A mentoring scheme for parliamentary scholars
The purpose of this scheme would be for for group members with secure roles to read over job applications and/or support precarious staff in their job hunts. We would like to offer this scheme especially to those colleagues who wish to work in academia who are either currently without an institution, or on a fixed-term contract at an institution without other parliamentary specialists. If you would like either to be a mentor or a mentee, then please email Stephen and/or Alexandra.
A parliamentary-studies-jobs.ac.uk
If colleagues have a research budget or teaching opportunities in the area of parliamentary studies, then please let us know and we can advertise through our newsletter and on Twitter and Facebook.
We have other ideas which are in the pipeline which hopefully we can announce over the next few months. If you have any other ideas, then please let us know.
7. Jobs and Internships
The Institute for Government is inviting applications for a senior researcher position. More details can be found here.
Applications are now open for the 2020-21 PSA-Parliament PhD internships. This joint initiative between the PSA and House of Commons Committee Office provides a fantastic opportunity for PSA members, currently studying toward their PhD, to gain some real-world experience working at Westminster. More details can be found here.
8. Other Events and Calls for Papers
The Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF) is commissioning a study on the role of Parliaments in linking Security Sector Reform and the Sustainable Development Goals. The publication will be approximately 30,000 words, and for each paper DCAF is offering a 5,600 CHF honorarium. Further information on the Call for Papers be found here.
The Canadian Study of Parliament Group is holding a special event entitled “Behind the Scenes of American Impeachment Trials: In conversation with the Parliamentarian of the US Senate” on Monday, September 14th at noon Eastern (online). You can register for the event here (cost: $10).
9. Recently on the Blog
Thanks once 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:
What does ‘evidence’ mean to MPs and officials in the UK House of Commons? – Marc Geddes
Arrested Development? The Limits of Parliamentary Development in Chaotic Political Systems – Victoria Hasson & Graeme Ramshaw
2016–17: Insights from the last ‘normal’ parliamentary session? – Ruth Dixon
Will the Ukrainian parliament and anti-corruption agency step up to the task of combating corruption? – Franklin De Vrieze and Luka Glusac
Why there is no such thing as the ‘Westminster model’ – Meg Russell and Ruxandra Serban
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.
10. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye
Emmeline Ledgerwood has published an article entitled MPs on the Subject of STEMM: What Can Oral History Tell Us? in Parliamentary History.
Lotte Hargrave and Tone Langengen have published an article entitled The Gendered Debate: Do Men and Women Communicate Differently in the House of Commons? in Politics and Gender.
Meg Russell and Ruxandra Serban have published an article entitled The Muddle of the ‘Westminster Model’: A Concept Stretched Beyond Repair in Government and Opposition.
The Journal of Legislative Studies has published a Special Issue on Parliaments and Post-Legislative Scrutiny edited by Franklin De Vrieze & Philip Norton.
If you would like your published research to be featured in this section, please email Stephen with details.