We were very busy at the PSA Conference in Birmingham, with lots of interesting new research, a busy AGM and fun social event at Rudy’s Pizza!
Our Panels
PSA25 began with the panel ‘Crisis, conflict and containment in parliamentary settings,’ featuring a rich mix of theory, quantitative work, and cases from multiple continents. Professor Rick Whitaker (Leicester) and Dr Philip Lynch explored ‘consensus and conflict’ in
House of Commons committees, examining divisions over inquiry reports. Dr Nathan Critch (Manchester), with Dr Dillon Wamsley and Dr Joseph Ward (Sheffield), analysed the ‘politics of containment’ in contemporary UK politics. Damilola Olorunshola (Bayreuth) discussed Nigeria’s post-COVID recovery for small businesses, and Kubra Aslan (York) examined Turkey’s ‘authoritarian drift’ and the opposition’s role in democratic backsliding.
We continued with a fascinating panel titled ‘Leadership in parliamentarism and the executive-legislative relationships’. Two of the papers provided a rich UK historical perspective on political leadership, whilst the third one added a very interesting comparative angle with a case study from sub-state legislative level in Mexico. Dr. James Strong from the Queen Mary University London explored leadership in the House of Commons in wartime through a series of insightful examples from history, and Mr. Peter Just, from the Centre for Legislative Studies at the University of Hull, explored the relationship of former Prime Ministers with the UK Parliament. The panel ended with an analysis of the legislative
process in the approval of the budget in the state of Guanajuato in Mexico, which highlighted significant political and institutional dynamics shaping the process.
We ended the first day with a panel on parliamentary reform and public engagement. PSA Parliaments Treasurer and Membership Officer Lauren Martin (Sheffield) presented updates from her research on e-petitions. Dr Louise Thompson (Manchester) and Prof Cristina Leston-Bandeira talked about Westminster Hall, and what its changing roles reveal about parliamentary reform. This was followed by a fascinating presentation on engagement in a
multi-level parliamentary environment in Belgium, by Dr Sofia Serra-Silva (Lisbon). Next, Dr Tom Fleming (UCL) presented a new typology of procedural change in parliaments, drawing
on types of changes in the UK House of Commons procedures.
Our second day of panels began with a fascinating session on ‘Parliament as a workplace and organisational practices’. It began with a fascinating presentation from Dr James Weinberg at the University of Sheffield with his research on the mental health of MPs and in particular the unique stresses faced by incoming MPs. This was followed by Dr Alex Prior at London South Bank University and Dr Louise Thompson at the University of Manchester who discussed their research on the effectiveness of parliamentary member organisations, namely the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. Then Andre Vella of the University of Birmingham, rounded up our morning panel with his fantastic presentation on parliamentary immunity in commonwealth legislative assemblies. This was a very interesting panel, with each of our speakers engaging with the behaviour, speeches and health of parliamentarians across institutions and in differing contexts.
The panel on legislative scrutiny also brought together interesting new research from our members. Dr Marc Geddes (Edinburgh) presented recent work from his project on how
select committees gather evidence, focusing on who gets cited in select committee reports. Dr Tom Caygill (Nottingham Trent) shared new findings on post-legislative scrutiny in the
Scottish Parliament. Zhan Chen (PhD candidate at Edinburgh) presented to our specialist group for the first time, with some initial findings from her PhD on voting alliances in the UK
House of Commons. We ended with research on select committee chairs and their impact in a paper by Dr Stephen Holden Bates (Birmingham), Dr Caroline Bhattacharya (Helsinki) and
Dr Calixte Bloquet (IPPR Berlin).
We finished our time at PSA25 with the panel ‘Representation and gendered patterns of parliamentary behaviour’. We started with Rainbow Murray’s (QMUL) research on gendered participation and conduct in parliamentary debates, which was complemented by Resul Umit’s (Durham) presentation on gendered interactions in the House of Commons. We then heard all about weddings, banquets and funerals from Tao Wang (Manchester), who was presenting his research on constituency relationships in Taiwan. We finished the panel – and our time at PSA25 – by hearing from Naira Al Iawati (Oman) on gender dynamics in the
Omani elected lower house. All four presentations provided interesting insights on representation and gendered parliamentary behaviour, demonstrating important similarities and differences across the world.
Our AGM
Thank you very much for all of you who attended our AGM. It was good to see so many of you there. Our AGM was dominated by four important matters:
- Saying good-bye to our co-convenor, Dr. Caroline Battharachya, who stepped down in April after serving the convening team of PSA Specialist group for two terms. We want to thank Caroline again for all the work she has done, congratulate her on her
passing her VIVA successfully and for the new job, and wish her all the best in the future. - Welcoming Grace Cooper (PhD candidate at the University of York) to our convening team as our Events Officer. Grace has long been a friend of the PSA Parliaments, and we are thrilled to start working with her.
- Our PSA Parliaments Annual Conference will continue to happen annually and we are actively looking for hosting partner institutions for this year. So, if you are interested
in hosting us this year, please let us know by emailing Grace
(grace.cooper@york.ac.uk) Diana (d.stirbu@lonodnmet.ac.uk) or Ruxandra (ruxandra.serban.13@ucl.ac.uk). - We took a decision (not an easy one) to charge a small fee for the PSA Parliaments Annual Conference from this year. This will add more sustainability to our annual conference and potentially free up some funding to support other activities during the year. We will keep you posted with developments and hopefully announce the location of the November conference soon.
Celebrating the excellence of our members
We want to congratulate once again our PSA Parliaments members Prof. Cristina Leston-Bandeira (University of Leeds) and Dr. Alexandra Meakin (University of Leeds) for their
fantastic and well-deserved academic prizes. Prof. Leston-Bandeira was celebrated by the PSA and awarded the Sir Isaiah Berlin Prize for outstanding professional contributions to political studies, whilst Dr. Meakin was awarded the Sir Bernard Crick Prize outstanding contributions to advancing teaching and learning in political studies by an early career academic.
