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July 2021 Newsletter

We hope that you are safe and well. We have some updates for you:

  1. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference
  2. End-of-Year Survey
  3. Recording Available of Our PSA Parliaments Roundtable
  4. Call for Papers: Questions of Accountability Conference
  5. PSA Report on Career Trajectories in Political Science & International Studies
  6. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
  7. Recently on the Blog

If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.

1. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference

We are pleased to announce details about our 2021 Annual Conference: Parliament at a Critical Juncture.

If circumstances allow, we will be holding a hybrid conference at the University of Birmingham on the 11th and 12th of November 2021.

If circumstances do not allow (and, at the time of writing, we’re still awaiting an update from central PSA), we will be holding a virtual conference on 12th November 2021 only.

For full details of the conference, including how to submit a paper proposal, please see our website.

2. End-of-Year Survey

At the end of a very long, tiring but successful year for PSA Parliaments, please could you take this end-of-year survey about the group and our potential plans for next year.

The survey is very short and should take no longer than 5 minutes to complete. All responses will be anonymous.

3. Recording Available of Our PSA Parliaments Roundtable

The recording of our roundtable on the past, present and future of parliamentary and legislative studies is now available on YouTube.

If you missed it, the roundtable featured talks by Emma Crewe, Shane Martin and Michelle Taylor-Robinson, as well as a presentation by Caroline Bhattacharya on the results of our recent survey of the sub-discipline.

Recordings of all other presentations made as part of our online conference can also be found on the PSA Parliaments YouTube Channel.

4. Call for Papers: Questions of Accountability Conference

The University of Worcester and the University of Sheffield are organising a conference/exhibition entitled Questions of Accountability between 1-5 November 2021, full details of which can be found here.

If you would like to propose a paper, event or panel for the conference, perhaps under the auspices of the PSA Parliaments specialist group, then please get in contact with Stephen in the first instance.

5. PSA Report on Career Trajectories in Political Science & International Studiesbs

In case you missed it at the time of release a couple of weeks ago, the PSA and the British International Studies Association co-published a report by Chris Hanretty on career trajectories in UK departments of politics and international relations.

The report brings together data relating to the gender, ethnicity, and other characteristics of those working in Higher Education departments and draws the following conclusions:

  • Senior positions in politics and international relations continue to be heavily dominated by white men;
  • There is a particular paucity of BAME staff at senior levels in Politics and International Relations departments. The likelihood of BAME staff occupying senior academic ranks is shown to be lower in Politics and International Relations than other social science disciplines;
  • Staff from ethnic minorities have a higher risk than their white counterparts of exiting UK Higher education;
  • At the current rate of progression, we will not reach gender equality in senior ranks within Politics and International Relations departments until 2045/46.

You can read the PSA’s statement on the report here.

6. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Mihail Chiru and Lieven De Winter have published an article, The Allocation of Committee Chairs and the Oversight of Coalition Cabinets in Belgiumin Government & Opposition.

The Westminster Foundation for Democracy has recently published three reports:

And, finally, new issues the Journal of Legislative Studies and Legislative Studies Quarterly have been published.

If you would like your published research to be featured in this section, please email Stephen with details.

7. Recently on the Blog

We’ve recently published one great blog:

If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study please get in touch with our communications officer, Gavin Hart.