We hope that you are keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you:
- PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference
- PSA Annual International Conference 2022
- Call for Papers: Parliamentary Studies is for Everybody Workshop
- New Overview of the Austrian Parliament
- Welcome to our new Communications Officer, Chris Monaghan!
- Call for Posters for Study of Parliament Group Oxford Weekend
- 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. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference
We are delighted to announce an excellent line-up of panels and papers for our 2021 Annual Conference, Parliament at a Critical Juncture.
The conference this year is a one-day virtual event on Friday 12th November 2021.
We have three panels on the themes of:
- Representatives and representation;
- Accountability and transparency in Parliaments;
- Power(lessness), practices and conventions.
To register (for free) and for full details of the conference and each of the panels, please see here.
2. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
We are delighted to launch our call for papers for the PSA Parliaments panels within the 2022 PSA Annual Conference (#PSA22). The conference is currently planned to be a blend of a physical and digital event taking place online and in York, between 10-13th April 2022 with the theme: “Politics from the Margins”. Full details of the conference, including the current plans for digital-only attendees can be found here.
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), which can be found on our website, to Alexandra and Stephen by Monday 4th October.
We welcome papers from PhD students through to professors and we are fully committed to avoiding manels. We are also seeking to increase the proportion of papers on our panels from people from an ethnic minority background so please get in touch with Alexandra or Stephen if you come from an ethnic minority background and would like to discuss how your research could be highlighted on our panels.
3. Call for Papers: Parliamentary Studies is for Everybody Workshop
Inspired by the recent textbook, Political Science is for Everybody, the Parliaments, Race, Migration & Intersectionality, and Women & Politics specialist groups of the UK Political Studies Association are organising a workshop entitled Parliamentary Studies is for Everybody.
The aim of the workshop is to explore parliaments (and legislatures) at the intersections: how different groups of people engage with, access, navigate and experience parliaments; how parliaments and particular parliamentary institutions might be biased towards certain groups; and how this context might influence parliamentary activity, legislative outcomes and the broader policy-making process.
The workshop will be held via Zoom on Friday 28 January 2022.Full details, including how to submit an abstract, can be found here.
We welcome applications from PhD students to professors, and we do not have any preference in terms of theory and method, or on which parliament(s) and/or legislature(s) you study. We particularly welcome applications from people who are from underrepresented groups in political science and academia more broadly.
4. New Overview of the Austrian Parliament
A new overview of the Austrian Parliament has been added to our map.
Many thanks to Christoph Clar for writing an excellent addition to our collection.
If you would like to write an overview of a parliament or legislature not yet covered on our maps (it is to our collective shame that there is not yet an overview of the UK Parliament), then please get in contact with Stephen or Alexandra.
5. Welcome to our new Communications Officer, Chris Monaghan!
We are really pleased that Chris Monaghan has joined us as our Communications Officer.
Chris is a Principal Lecturer in Law at the University of Worcester. He has a keen interest in constitutional law, accountability and legal history, and his current research projects include the Chagos litigation and impeachment as an accountability mechanism.
Chris is the co-editor of the Routledge Frontiers in the Study of Accountability book series, and is currently organising the Questions of Accountability conference.
His twitter handle is @Chris_JMonaghan.
6. Call for Posters for Study of Parliament Group Oxford Weekend
There will be a new poster session at the SPG’s Oxford Weekend on the 7-8th January 2022 which is open to all members of the SPG, including PhD students, early career researchers and officials. Please consider submitting a poster to display findings from current research projects, to disseminate information about new projects, or to put forward case studies of best practice.
If you’d like to take part in the session, please email Louise Thompson with the following information: Poster Title; Author/(s); Affiliation/(s); Short Summary (150 words) of what the poster will cover.
The deadline for submissions of interest is Friday 8th October 2021. Final posters and short videos would need to be completed by Monday 6th December 2021. Support will be given with the printing and display of posters.
Some financial support (up to £100) towards attending the conference is available for PhDs / ECRs who present a poster. For further details contact Richard Kelly. If you are not a member of the SPG but are interested in joining, please get in touch with Louise.
7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
The South Africa-based Parliamentary Monitoring Group has published a report by Rebecca Sibanda on Assessing the Effectiveness of Written Questions and Replies as an Oversight Mechanism in the South African Parliament.
Rainbow Murray has published It’s a rich man’s world: How class and glass ceilings intersect for UK parliamentary candidates in International Political Science Review.
Fotios Fitsilis has published a research note in the Journal of Legislative Studies entitled Artificial Intelligence (AI) in parliaments – preliminary analysis of the Eduskunta experiment.
Rod Rhodes, Matthew Flinders, Adrian Vatter and David Judge have written a response to Meg Russell and Ruxandra Serban’s recent article on the Westminster Model in Government and Opposition: Stretched but not snapped: A response to Russell & Serban on Retiring the ‘Westminster Model.
John Connolly, Matthew Flinders and David Judge have published Reviewing the review: a three-dimensional approach to analysing the 2017–2020 review of the House of Lords investigative and scrutiny committees in the Journal of Legislative Studies, available on early view.
And, finally, new issues of Legislative Studies Quarterly, Parliamentary Affairs and the Journal of Legislative Studies have been published.
If you would like your published research to be featured in this section, please email Stephen with details.
8. Recently on the Blog
We have recently published one great blog:
- Parliaments or Legislatures, or perhaps Assemblies? Names, origins and meanings by Cristine Leston-Bandeira
If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study, please get in touch with our communications officer, Chris.