We hope that you are keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you:
- PSA Parliaments Annual Conference 2022 in Birmingham & Online
- PSA Annual Conference 2023 in Liverpool & Online
- Goodbye to Alexandra…
- …And Hello (Again) to Sean and Caroline
- Wanted: Treasurer & Membership Officer
- Urgent Questions with Diana Stirbu
- PSA Parliaments Online Brown Bag Seminars
- Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
- Recently on the Blog
If you have any notices/messages you would like us to circulate to our prizewinning group, please let us know.
1. PSA Parliaments Annual Conference 2022 in Birmingham & Online
Our Annual Conference will be held at The Exchange in Birmingham and online on 3rd-4th November 2022 with the theme of What Next?
We have our now traditional drinks reception on the Thursday evening and then four brilliant panels on the Friday.
We had nearly twice as many paper proposals than normal and we weren’t able to accommodate everyone on the Friday so we have decided to also run some annex panels online in December and January – please keep an eye out for details in future newsletters.
The conference (including lunch and refreshments) is free for all attendees, whether presenting or in the audience, but you must register beforehand. We are also in a position to be able to offer a limited number of travel bursaries to PhD students. Please contact Stephen for further details.
Please see here for full details of the conference, including how to book tickets.
We are very much excited to be meeting up in person after two years of online conferences and we hope to see as many of you there as possible!
2. PSA Annual Conference 2023 in Liverpool & Online
The 73rd Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association will be held in Liverpool and online on 3rd-5th April 2023 (see here for details).
The submission process is different from previous years in that specialist groups were given an exclusive timeframe for them to receive papers and propose panels ahead of the open call on 6th October.
We’ve already put together four panels but we do have room for more in our allocation. So, if you have missed the specialist group deadline and will submit through the open call but would like to present under the auspices of our group, we recommend putting “I would like to be on a PSA Parliaments panel please” somewhere prominent on your submission. It’s not now fully in our control but hopefully your request will be granted by the convenors.
As always, we do not have any preferences in terms of theory, method or empirical focus and we welcome papers from PhD students through to professors, as well as from practitioners. We are fully committed to avoiding all-male panels. We are also seeking to increase the proportion of papers on our panels from people from an ethnic minority background.
3. Goodbye to Alexandra…
After five years on the team in one guise or another, we’re very sad to say goodbye to Alexandra, who is stepping down as co-convenor after our conference in November. Alexandra has been a brilliant co-convenor and, before that, communications officer and will be sorely missed. But we’re also very happy that she is expecting her second child and that she will continue to be a valued member of the group when she returns from parental leave.
We look forward to saying goodbye to her properly in Birmingham, as well as reading her valedictory Urgent Questions in the next newsletter!
4. …And Hello (Again) to Sean and Caroline
We’re very lucky that Seán Haughey and Caroline Bhattacharya have agreed to step up from Treasurer and Membership Officer respectively to be the new co-convenors!
Many of you will already know Seán and Caroline but, for those who don’t, Seán is a Joint Lecturer in Politics and Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool whose research focusses on the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive, and Caroline is a PhD student at the University of Helsinki (but based in Cambridge) whose research concerns parliamentary contestation, German parliamentarism and parliamentary roles.
Welcome to your new roles, Seán and Caroline!
5. Wanted: Treasurer & Membership Officer
PSA Parliaments are now looking for a new Treasurer and/or Membership Officer.
If you are interested in joining the PSA Parliaments team and being part of, quite frankly, the friendliest and prizewinning-est specialist group in the world, then please let Stephen know in the first instance.
PSA Parliaments team members must be based in the UK and be somewhere between PhD student and professor.
6. Urgent Questions with Diana Stirbu
This month’s interviewee is Professor Diana Stirbu, perhaps best known for her work on the Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru.
Head over to Urgent Questions to read about photography, Japan and what she has in common with Homer Simpson!
7. PSA Parliaments Online Brown Bag Seminars
After the success of our online events over the past couple of years, we will be holding some online seminars this year.
The purpose of the seminars will be to allow people to showcase their work and to generate debate and discussion. As such, papers presented will be recently published work, or work accepted for publication, rather than work in progress. The seminars will last an hour and will be held on Wednesday lunchtimes on an ad hoc basis.
If you would like to present a paper, or want to nominate someone, then please email Stephen.
8. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
Peter Clegg, Mette Marie Stæhr Harder, Elisabeth Nauclér and Rafael Cox Alomar have published an article, Parliamentary representation of overseas territories in the metropolis: a comparative analysis in Commonwealth & Comparative Politics.
Ben Worthy and Stefani Langehennig have published an article, Accountability, analysis and avoidance: how PMO data impacts on Westminster, in the Journal of Legislative Studies.
Simon Weschle has published an article, Politicians’ Private Sector Jobs and Parliamentary Behavior, in the American Journal of Political Science.
And, finally, a new issue of Legislative Studies Quarterly has been published.
If you would like your published research to be featured in this section, please email Stephen with details.
9. Recently on the Blog
We published one great blog in September:
- The Black Box of Authoritarian Legislatures by Felix Wiebrecht
If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study, please get in touch with our communications officer, Chris.