We hope that you are safe and well. We have some updates for you:
- Reminder about our PSA Parliaments Survey: The State of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies
- PSA Parliaments at #PSA21
- PSA Parliaments Panel on Innovations in Theory and Method in Parliamentary Studies
- Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Sarah Childs
- New Overviews of Parliaments Added to our Website
- Webinar for Prospective PhD Students in Parliamentary Studies
- EUGenDem Parliamentary Ethnography Workshop & Book Launch
- Jobs & PhD Opportunities!
- Petition: Save Kingston Politics Department
- Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye
- Recently on the Blog
If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.
1. Reminder about our PSA Parliaments Survey: The State of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies
We have already received over 150 responses to our survey on research in parliamentary and legislative studies.
The purpose of the survey is to map the sub-discipline and to identify any trends and absences.
If you haven’t filled it in yet, there is still plenty of time. The survey will remain open until the end of May.
We will be presenting the initial findings at 2pm on Wednesday 9th June 2021 as part of our roundtable on the past, present and future of parliamentary studies. Book your ticket now!
2. PSA Parliaments at #PSA21
PSA Parliaments had a very successful time at the annual PSA Conference, even if we do say so ourselves!
We organised four excellent panels on parliaments and the pandemic, representation and diversity, parliamentary relations and powers, and questions, content and language in parliamentary proceedings.
A full report will be produced for next month’s newsletter.
3. PSA Parliaments Panel on Innovations in Theory and Method in Parliamentary Studies
Due to the PSA Annual Conference and the Easter Holidays, our online panel is taking a well earned break this month. Don’t worry though – we’ll be back on Wednesday May 12th at 2pm.
For our penultimate panel of the year, we’ll be focusing on innovations in theory and method in parliamentary studies and our speakers are:
- James Strong on “Studying parliament’s past to understand its future”;
- Stephen Holden Bates on “Re-structuring parliamentary roles”;
- Caroline Bhattacharya on “New methodological approaches to party unity and discursive contestation”; and
- Felicity Matthews on “The Democratic Ecology of Parliamentary e-Petitions: A Case Study of the UK Petitions Committee Online Abuse Inquiry”
All panels are free and all are welcome but please register beforehand in order to gain details of how to access the event.
Recordings of past presentations, including from last month’s excellent panel on parliaments and social media, can be found on the PSA Parliaments YouTube Channel.
4. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Sarah Childs
We are very pleased to announce that Professor Sarah Childs is the fourth interviewee for our new feature, Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions, where scholars and practitioners in the field answer questions about their life, their academic career, their interests, and other less serious questions.
Please visit our website now to find out about her job in an industrial laundry, whether she’s a Hotspur or a Gooner, and whether she’ll be the first respondent not to say that the Palace of Westminster is their favourite building!
If you would like to see someone answer our urgent and not-so-urgent questions, then please let us know.
5. New Overviews of Parliaments Added to our Website
We have recently added three new overviews of parliaments to our website.
Many thanks to Mark Egan, Roberto Cabrera-Tapia, and Andreja Pegan & Alenka Krašovec for their respective overviews of Jersey, Chile and Slovenia.
If you would like to write an overview for one of the countries or jurisdictions not covered on our maps, then please get in touch.
6. Webinar for Prospective PhD Students in Parliamentary Studies
PSA Parliaments have organised a webinar for prospective PhD students who are interested in parliamentary and legislative studies. The webinar will take place at 2pm on Monday April 19th 2021.
More details, and how to sign up, can be found here.
Please spread the word to any undergraduate and MA students you may know!
7. EUGenDem Parliamentary Ethnography Workshop & Book Launch
Our good friends at EUGenDem are holding their last spring workshop on parliamentary ethnography, featuring talks by Emma Crewe and Sarah Childs.
The workshop will be followed by a book launch of Cherry Miller’s monograph Gendering the Everyday in the UK House of Commons: Beneath the Spectacle, which is based on her prize-winning thesis. The book will be introduced by the author herself and then discussed by Marc Geddes (late of this parish).
Full details of the workshop and book launch can be found here.
8. Jobs & PhD Opportunities!
Lectureships at the University of Birmingham
The Department of Political Science & International Studies at the University of Birmingham is advertising several positions at lecturer and senior lecturer level.
It’s an open call, although the department would particularly welcome applications from those working in the areas of Representation, Accountability and Democracy; Race and Ethnicity; Gender; and Data and Technology.
Full details can be found here of how to apply to work in a friendly, intellectually-vibrant department in the best city in the world where the sun always shines (OK, that’s enough now – Ed.).
Policy Analyst, Lords Constitution Committee
The House of Lords Constitution Select Committee is hiring a policy analyst.
Full details can be found here.
PhD scholarships at the Centre for Democratic Engagement, University of Leeds
The Centre for Democratic Engagement invites applications from motivated students with PhD proposals reflecting our areas of expertise in advance of upcoming scholarship deadlines.
Information on how to apply is here.
The Centre for Democratic Engagement is able to support candidates for both University-funded Leeds Doctoral Scholarships and the School’s own Politics of Global Challenges Doctoral Scholarships:
Please direct informal queries to Professor Cristina Leston-Bandeira.
9. Petition: Save Kingston Politics Department
The Politics & IR department at Kingston University is under threat of closure.
Please see here for a joint statement by PSA, BISA and UACES on the risks to the study of Politics and International Relations and please see here for a petition to save the department, which, at the time of writing, had already received over 1,700 signatures.
10. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye
James Strong has published an article in Parliamentary Studies called “Did Theresa May Kill the War Powers Convention? Comparing Parliamentary Debates on UK Intervention in Syria in 2013 and 2018”.
David Judge has recently published two articles: “Walking the dark side: evading parliamentary scrutiny” in Political Quarterly, and “Why it matters to keep asking why legislatures matter” with Cristina Leston-Bandeira in the Journal of Legislative Studies.
Cherry Miller’s article “Parliamentary ethnography and feminist institutionalism: gendering institutions – but how?” has been published on fast track by the European Journal of Politics & Gender.
Jorge Fernandes, Thomas Saalfeld and Carsten Schwemmer have published an article on the politics of select committee assignments in the British House of Commons in Legislative Studies Quarterly.
Jessica Smith (with Sarah Childs)has published a report Remotely Representative Parliament: Lesson Learning from the Hybrid Parliament with the Centenary Action Group and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.
A new issue of Legislative Studies Quarterly has been published.
And, finally, not a publication but our co-convenor, Alexandra Meakin, appeared on Today in Parliament to talk about the Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster.
If you would like your published research to be featured in this section, please email Stephen with details.
11. Recently on the Blog
Our blog is still taking a breather but we’ll hopefully be back in April.
If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study please get in touch with our communications officer, Gavin Hart.