Category: News

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

1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
2. PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition 2022
3. Urgent Questions with Jonathan Tonge
4. Book Launch: Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees
5. Job Opportunity at the University of East Anglia
6. Other Events
7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
8. 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 Annual International Conference 2022

Registration has opened for the 2022 PSA Annual Conference being held in York and digitally in April 2022. If you haven’t booked yet, early bird prices have been extended to 4th February 2022. Full details of the conference and how to register can be found on the PSA22 website.

As announced previously, we are running five panels and a roundtable on Exploring Parliament: Looking to the Future.

Whether in person or online, we hope to see you there!

2. PSA Parliaments Undergraduate Essay Competition 2022

We are pleased to announce the launch of our 2022 Undergraduate Essay Competition! The winner will be presented with a prize of £100 and a runner-up prize of £50 at our annual conference in November 2022.

The competition is open to all undergraduate students who have submitted a piece of assessed work which contributes to our understanding of parliaments or legislatures.

Full details of the competition can be found here.

3. Urgent Questions with Jonathan Tonge

This month’s interviewee is the outgoing editor of Parliamentary Affairs, Prof. Jonathan Tonge.

Put on your Fred Perry, get yourself a suedehead and head on over to Urgent Questions to read about some great mod bands and – what is frankly – a shocking answer to a question about Star Wars.

4. Book Launch: Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees

We are delighted to announce that PSA Parliaments will be co-hosting the book launch of Cheryl Schonhardt Bailey’s forthcoming monograph Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees (Oxford University Press).

The launch will take place virtually on Wednesday 9th March 2022 between 3:00pm and 4:30pm GMT.

Full details of the event, including how to register, can be found here.

5. Job Opportunity at the University of East Anglia

An exciting opportunity has arisen to join the ESRC’s flagship Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST) at the University of East Anglia as a Senior Research Associate in Policy, Politics and Climate Change (Fixed-term).

The post holder will join an international team of scholars to conduct research on politicians’ role in accelerating climate mitigation in upcoming decades, commensurate with limiting climate change to 1.5 or 2°C of warming.

Full details can be found here.

6. Other Events

ECPR General Conference, University of Innsbruck, 22–26 August 2022

The ECPR Standing Group on Parliaments have released a call for papers for their section of the 2022 ECPR General Conference.

Full details can be found here.

Global Conference on Parliamentary studies, Budapest, 12-13 May 2022

The University of Public Service, Ludovika, have released a call for papers for a forthcoming global conference on parliamentary studies.

Full details can be found here.

7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Larissa Peixoto Vale Gomes has published an article called Bang for the Buck: Brazil’s Electoral and Political Financing Rules from a Gendered Perspective in E-Legis.

Brighton Msagalla and Marianna Visser have published an article called Agenda-setting through topic shift in Tanzanian parliamentary debate: The derailment of strategic manoeuvring in Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies.

Alexander Hemingway has published an article called Does Class Shape Legislators’ Approach to Inequality and Economic Policy? A Comparative View in Government & Opposition.

Louise Thompson and Mitya Pearson have published an article called ‘Enter parliament but never become part of it’: How have the Greens in the United Kingdom approached opposition? in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations.

Peter Buisseret and Carlo Prato have published an article called Competing Principals? Legislative Representation in List Proportional Representation Systems in the American Journal of Political Science.

Mark Goodwin, Stephen Holden Bates and Stephen McKay have an article called Electing to Do Women’s Work? Gendered Divisions of Labor in U.K. Select Committees, 1979–2016 in the latest issue of Politics & Gender.

Lotte Hargrave and Tone Langengen have published an article called The Gendered Debate: Do Men and Women Communicate Differently in the House of Commons? also in the latest issue of Politics & Gender.

The Westminster Foundation for Democracy have recently released three new publications:

• Post-legislative scrutiny in the UK Parliament by Tom Caygill;
• Comparative analysis of the UK Bribery Act 2010 and anti-bribery legislation in Ukraine, Indonesia, and Kenya by Rob McCusker;
• An introduction to deliberative democracy for members of parliament by Julia Keutgen.

Kevin Orr and Sabina Siebert have published a Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) Briefing called The Scottish Parliament: how the Parliament building shapes the workings of the institution.

A new issue of Parliamentary Affairs has been published, featuring a special collection on Parliaments as Workplaces: Gendered Approaches to the Study of Legislatures edited by Josefina Erikson and Tània Verge.

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

8. Recently on the Blog

We published 8 (eight) great blogs in January!

• “Tread carefully” – the UK Parliament as a human rights “defender” within the Northern Ireland devolution framework by Leah Rea
• Exposing the hidden wiring of the Parliament by Ben Yong
• Does being watched make MPs behave better? by Ben Worthy and Cat Morgan
• A committee is an organisation, not an institution – but what is an organisation? A response mainly to myself by Stephen Holden Bates
• Reimagining impeachment: A new blueprint for our challenging times by Chris Monaghan
• What does petitioning in the 20th century show us about the relationship between people and parliament? by Anna Bocking-Welch, Richard Huzzey, Cristina Leston-Bandeira and Henry Miller
• Intersectional representation of Arab legislators in the Israeli parliament: The first decade 1949-1959 by Osnat Akirav
• What ever happened to impeachment in the United Kingdom? Accountability, history and the decline of parliamentary impeachment by Chris Monaghan

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

Happy New Year! We hope that you are keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you in this shorter than usual newsletter:

1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
2. Book Launch: Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees
3. Parliamentary Engagement Opportunities for Researchers
4. Membership & Funding of PSA Parliaments
5. PSA Parliaments Working Papers Series
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 Annual International Conference 2022

Registration has opened for the 2022 PSA Annual Conference being held in York and digitally in April 2022 (early bird prices end on 24 January 2022). Full details of the conference and how to register can be found on the PSA22 website.

As announced previously, we are running five panels, on the below themes (the full list of papers and panels can be found on our website):

• Parliamentary powers, prerogatives, and public engagement
• How MPs use old and new media and how old and new media affects MPs
• How to be a parliamentarian: how do Members participate?
• Comparative and inter-parliamentary analysis
• How to be a parliamentarian? Representation and roles

We will also be hosting a round-table event Exploring Parliament: Looking to the Future. The line-up for the roundtable has now been confirmed and promises to provide a fantastic conversation:

• Dr Farrah Bhatti (Principal Clerk of Select Committees, House of Commons)
• Simon Burton (Clerk of the Parliaments, House of Lords)
• Professor Sarah Childs (University of Edinburgh)
• Jack Sheldon (Cambridge University)

Whether in person or online, we hope to see you there!

2. Book Launch: Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees

We are delighted to announce that PSA Parliaments will be co-hosting the book launch of Cheryl Schonhardt Bailey’s forthcoming monograph Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees (Oxford University Press).

The launch will take place virtually on Wednesday 9th March 2022 between 3:00pm and 4:30pm GMT.

Full details of the event, including how to register, can be found here.

3. Parliamentary Engagement Opportunities for Researchers

Did you know you can subscribe to UK Parliament’s Knowledge Exchange Unit weekly round up to stay up to date with opportunities for researchers and experts to engage with the UK Parliament?

Please see here for details about how to receive information about calls for evidence from parliamentary select committees, academic fellowship opportunities, requests for expertise and more.

4. Membership & Funding of PSA Parliaments

Did you know that PSA Parliaments receive funding from the PSA based on our number of members?

So, if you are a member of the PSA but not yet an official member of PSA Parliaments, please sign up here so that we can maximise our funding and support the sub-discipline to an even greater extent.

5. PSA Parliaments Working Papers Series

As announced last month, we are now accepting expressions of interest to contribute to our working paper series, which publishes working papers across the sub-discipline of parliamentary and legislative studies.

You can read our first two working papers here and here.

If you are interested in publishing a working paper, please consult our submission guidelines.

6. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Siim Trumm and Andrew Barclay have published an article in Political Studies called Parliamentary Representation: Should MPs Prioritise Their Own Views or Those of Their Voters?

David Froomkin and Ian Shaprio have published an article in Political Studies called The New Authoritarianism in Public Choice.

Peter Allen has an article in Politics & Gender called Experience, Knowledge, and Political Representation.

And, finally, a new issue of The International Journal of Parliamentary Studies has also 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

Our blog took a break during December while we were making mince pies and getting boosted. We’ll be back in January!

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

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

1. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
2. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference: Parliament at a Critical Juncture
3. Winners announced of our Undergraduate Essay Competition!
4. New Overview of the Australian Parliament Published
5. PSA Parliaments Working Papers Series
6. Call for Applications: Leverhulme PhD studentships at the University of East Anglia
7. Call for Papers: Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700: Concepts, Methods, Approaches
8. Other Events: Study of Parliament Group Annual Conference
9. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
10. 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 Annual International Conference 2022

Registration has opened for the 2022 PSA Annual Conference being held in York and digitally in April 2022 (early bird prices end on 24 January 2022). Full details of the conference and how to register can be found on the PSA22 website.

As announced last month, we are running five panels, plus a round-table event Exploring Parliament: Looking to the Future. The themes of our panels are:

• Parliamentary powers, prerogatives, and public engagement
• How MPs use old and new media and how old and new media affects MPs
• How to be a parliamentarian: how do Members participate?
• Comparative and inter-parliamentary analysis
• How to be a parliamentarian? Representation and roles

Whether in person or online, we hope to see you there!

2. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference: Parliament at a Critical Juncture

Our annual conference, which was held online last month, was a roaring success, even if we do say so ourselves!

We had an excellent line-up of panels on the themes of:

1. Representatives and representation;
2. Accountability and transparency in Parliaments;
3. Power(lessness), practices and conventions.

If you missed it, you can catch up on all the papers on our YouTube channel.

The five papers on the first panel are already available and the others will be added in the next couple of weeks.

3. Winners of our Undergraduate Essay Competition Announced!

We are delighted to announce the winner and runner-up of the 2021 PSA Parliaments undergraduate essay competition!

The winner, Callum Murphy who studied at Queen Mary University of London, won £100 for his essay on how Parliament engaged with the Universal Credit policy.

The runner-up, Dana Ali who also studied at Queen Mary University of London, won £50 for her essay on parliamentary scrutiny of air quality.

Congratulations to Callum and Dana! And many thanks to Alice Lilly from the Institute for Government for judging the competition.

You can read the prize-winning essays here.

4. New Overview of the Australian Parliament Published

Many thanks to Thomas Dray for writing an overview of the Australian Parliament.

If you would like to write an overview of one of the parliaments or legislatures not yet covered on our maps, then please get in touch with Chris.

5. PSA Parliaments Working Papers Series

We are very excited to announce that we are now accepting expressions of interest to contribute to our recently-launched working paper series, which publishes working papers across the sub-discipline of parliamentary and legislative studies.

You can read our first two working papers here and here.

If you are interested in publishing a working paper, please consult our submission guidelines.

6. Call for Applications: Leverhulme PhD studentships at the University of East Anglia

The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, UK, is seeking applications for PhD studentships in the Leverhulme Trust’s ‘Critical Decade for Climate Change’ doctoral training programme.

Three of the studentships are focused on the role of parliaments and politicians in climate policy making and implementation:

1. Climate mitigation through the decision of courts: a critical evaluation
2. How are publics’ climate change attitudes and behaviours influenced by politicians?
3. Delivering net zero requires local political action: what will the role of local politicians be in the critical decade?

The studentships start in October 2022 with each scholarship covering: tuition fees (for both home and international students); a maintenance stipend (£15,285 per year in 2022/23); and a generous research and training support grant of up to £8,000 over the course of the 4 year PhD programme.

More information about all the individual projects and the doctoral training programme, can be found here.

7. Call for Papers: Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700: Concepts, Methods, Approaches

This interdisciplinary international conference will explore the culture of early modern Europe’s political assemblies, and ask how it was expressed in language, writing, images, institutions, and symbolic practices.

It will be held at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, 22-24 June 2022, and is partly supported by The Europaeum.

Deadline for proposals is 31 January 2022. More details about the conference can be found here.

8. Other Events: Study of Parliament Group Annual Conference

The Study of Parliament Group will hold their annual conference at Oxford and online on 7-8 January 2022.

The deadline for booking is Friday 10 December. You must be an SPG member to attend. More details from their website.

9. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Nokwazi Makanya has published an article entitled Progress with Parliamentary ‘Power over the Purse’: The Case of South Africa in Parliamentary Affairs.

Diana Stirbu has written a report for the Welsh Senedd on committee effectiveness: Power, Influence and Impact of Senedd Committees: Developing a framework for measuring committees’ effectiveness

Netina Tan and Cassandra Preece have published an article entitled Ethnic Quotas, Political Representation and Equity in Asia Pacific in Representation.

Tom Loughran and Sean Haughey have published a report on public opinion and power-sharing in Northern Ireland.

A special issue of The Journal of Legislative Studies on administering representative democracy has been published.

And, finally, new issues of Representation and Legislative Studies Quarterly have also been published.

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

10. Recently on the Blog

We have recently published two great blogs:

• The Owen Patterson Scandal: Standards, Trust and Democratic Norms by Chris Monaghan, Caroline Bhattacharya and Alexandra Meakin
• Using the past to help us to understand the future of the Palace of Westminster by Alexandra Meakin

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

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

1. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference: Parliament at a Critical Juncture
2. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
3. New Working Paper on Bibliometric Analysis of Parliamentary Studies Journals
4. PSA Parliaments at Questions of Accountability Conference
5. New Project: Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700
6. Other Events: EUGenDem Workshop on Research Findings
7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
8. 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

It is nearly time for our online annual conference on Friday 12th November 2021 but there is still time to sign up!

We have an excellent line-up of panels on the themes of:

1. Representatives and representation;
2. Accountability and transparency in Parliaments;
3. Power(lessness), practices and conventions.

In addition to the panels, we will be announcing the results of our 2021 undergraduate essay prize!

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 confirm our panels for the Political Studies Association annual conference (PSA22), taking place in York and digitally in April 2022. We have five excellent panels, plus a round-table event Exploring Parliament: Looking to the Future. The themes of our panels are:

• Parliamentary powers, prerogatives, and public engagement
• How MPs use old and new media and how old and new media affects MPs
• How to be a parliamentarian: how do Members participate?
• Comparative and inter-parliamentary analysis
• How to be a parliamentarian? Representation and roles

Full details of each of the panels can be found here.

Registration will open on 15 November, with early bird prices ending on 24 January 2022. The details of registration fees can be found on the PSA22 website.

Thank you to everyone who submitted a paper proposal – we were very impressed with the high standard and look forward to seeing you in York!

3. New Working Paper on Bibliometric Analysis of Parliamentary Studies Journals

To accompany our recent survey of the sub-discipline, the PSA Parliaments team, led by Caroline Bhattacharya, has produced a bibliometric analysis of three parliamentary studies journals: Legislative Studies Quarterly, The Journal of Legislative Studies and Parliamentary Affairs.

Covering the last 25 years, we present findings on authorship and citation patterns, as well as the topics of articles and key publications.

You can read the working paper (and find out whether you and/or your favourite scholars make the most-cited and key publications lists) here.

4. PSA Parliaments at Questions of Accountability Conference

PSA Parliaments are hosting a panel on parliamentary committees and accountability at the Questions of Accountability conference, co-organised by our very own, Chris Monaghan.

The panel is at 10am on Tuesday 2nd November. Full details of the panel and the conference can be found here. You can sign up (for free) here.

5. New Project: Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700

A team led by Professor Paulina Kewes at the University of Oxford has launched a new project, Recovering Europe’s Parliamentary Culture, 1500-1700. As part of the project, the team are hosting a blog series on their theme – but ranging more widely in methodology and period coverage – in collaboration with the History of Parliament Trust.

You can follow the project on Twitter here.

6. Other Events: EUGenDem Workshop on Research Findings

Our good friends at EUGenDem are holding an online workshop on 19th November 2021 at 10:00-12:00 EET (9:00-11:00 CET) to present research findings from their project Gender, party politics, and democracy in Europe: Studying European Parliament’s political groups.

Full details of the workshop and how to sign up can be found here.

7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Sarah Dingler and Lena Ramstetter have a FirstView article in Government & Opposition entitled When Does She Rebel? How Gender Affects Deviating Legislative Behaviour

Andrés Dockendorff, Ricardo Gamboa and Marcel Aubry have published a research note in Representation entitled Substantive Representation of Women’s Interests: Chile, 1990–2020

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 are watching to make sure climate legislation has an impact by Rafael Jimenez Aybar and Franklin De Vrieze

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

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

1. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference
2. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
3. Call for Papers: Parliamentary Studies is for Everybody Workshop
4. New Overview of the Austrian Parliament
5. Welcome to our new Communications Officer, Chris Monaghan!
6. Call for Posters for Study of Parliament Group Oxford Weekend
7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
8. 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:

1. Representatives and representation;
2. Accountability and transparency in Parliaments;
3. 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.

We hope that you had a good summer. We have returned from our lilos and have some updates for you:

1. PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference
2. PSA Annual International Conference 2022
3. Report on our Survey of the Sub-Discipline
4. Our Plans for the Upcoming Year
5. Goodbye to Gavin
6. Wanted! Communications Officer
7. Book Launch: Parliamentary Committees in the Policy Process
8. Other Events: SPG Online Seminar on Select Committee Powers
9. Call for Papers: Fifteenth Wroxton College Workshop
10. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
11. 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

Due to a mixture of the current situation and the precautionary measures put in place by the PSA, we have decided that our 2021 Annual Conference, Parliament at a Critical Juncture, will be an entirely virtual event on Friday 12th November 2021.

Due to the previous uncertainty surrounding the format, we have extended the deadline for submissions until 22nd September 2021.

Despite hoping that we could meet in person this year, the conference promises to be an excellent event, following in the footsteps of our successful online events last year.

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

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. Report on our Survey of the Sub-Discipline

Our report on the findings of the 2021 PSA Parliaments Survey of the Sub-Discipline can now be found on our website.

The survey sought to: (i) identify and map trends in theory and methods across the sub-field of parliamentary and legislative studies; (ii) understand who is undertaking research in this area; and (iii) gain people’s views about how the sub-field could be improved. We received 218 responses from people based in 48 countries.

The report is the first paper in our new PSA Parliaments Working Paper Series. More details about how to publish a working paper with us will be included in a future newsletter.

4. Our Plans for the Year

Thanks to all those who filled in our end-of-year survey over the summer. On the basis of your responses and our reflections on last year, we aim to do the following during the 2021-22 academic year, in addition to our annual conference and our panels at the PSA Annual Conference:

• Instead of the regular monthly virtual panels we ran last year, this year we have decided to run fewer on-line events and make use of different formats. We are planning to hold book launches (our first is detailed below) and one-hour departmental-style seminars (where a single scholar presents a paper), as well as conference-style panels. If you are interested in holding a book launch with us, or presenting a paper either as part of a seminar or a panel, please get in touch.
• We are hoping to help organise a couple of workshops– keep an eye-out for details of the first one in next month’s newsletter!
• We are launching the PSA Parliaments Working Papers Series. Again, more details in next month’s newsletter!
• If we have enough time and resources, we’re also hoping to launch a PSA Parliaments Podcast. The aim of the podcast will be to discuss the academic study of parliaments and legislatures with scholars at various stages of their careers who have expertise in particular areas. If you are a member of the PSA and based in the UK and would like to be involved in this project (or, indeed, take a lead on it), then please get in contact.

5. Goodbye to Gavin

It is with mixed emotions that we are saying goodbye to our communications officer, Gavin. We are very happy that he has secured a lectureship in criminology at Liverpool Hope University but sad that his migration across disciplinary boundaries means that he’ll be focusing his research away from parliamentary studies.

Gavin has been communications officer for us since 2019 and has been brilliant at editing our blog and tweeting our tweets. We will miss him and are frustrated that we never convinced him to play his guitar during one of our zoom meetings.

So, it is with a tear in our eye but with fondness in our heart that we must say goodbye to Gavin… but not before he gets a newly-instituted PSA Parliaments send-off by answering some Urgent Questions!

6. Wanted! Communications Officer

Would you like to be our new Communications Officer?

The role entails editing our blog and running our Twitter account, as well as contributing to the general running of the group. The PSA Parliaments team tends to meet once a month during the academic year with some emailing in the meanwhilst. PSA Parliaments is one of the biggest specialist groups of the PSA and must surely be the friendliest.

If you are interested, or want to discuss the role in more detail, please feel free to contact Alexandra and/or Stephen. To take up the role, you must be a member of the PSA and be based in the UK.

7. Book Launch: Parliamentary Committees in the Policy Process

A virtual book launch will be held for the new Routledge collection Parliamentary Committees in the Policy Process edited by Sven Siefken and Hilmar Rommetvedt on Wednesday 29th September at 13:00 London Time.

There will be talks by the editors, Philip Norton, and some of the country specialists who contributed chapters.

The event is free but please register here beforehand. All welcome!

The event is co-sponsored by PSA Parliaments and IPSA’s Research Committee of Legislative Specialists.

8. Other Events: SPG Online Seminar on Select Committee Powers

The Study of Parliament Group are holding an online seminar on select committee powers on 16th September 2021 at 19:30.

Full details of the seminar, including how to register, can be found here.

9. Call for Papers: Fifteenth Wroxton College Workshop

The Fifteenth Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians will be held on 30th-31st July 2022 at Wroxton College, Near Banbury, Oxfordshire, UK.

Paper proposals (no more than 300 words), plus suggestions for panels and requests for further information, should be sent to Philip Norton by 31st January 2022.

Details of the most recent Workshops, with the topics of papers delivered, can be found on the Workshop’s website.

10. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Mark Bennister has published an article, Navigating three faces of decentred leadership in the UK Parliament, as part of a special issue on decentering leadership in The International Journal of Public Leadership.

Stephen Elstub, David Farrell, Jayne Carrick and Patricia Mockler’s evaluation of Climate Assembly UK, which was commissioned by six House of Commons Select Committees, has been published.

Women, Power, and Political Representation, edited by Roosmarijn de Geus, Erin Tolley, Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant and Peter John Loewen, has been published by University of Toronto Press.

Paul Chaisty and Timothy Power have published an article in Government & Opposition entitled Does Power Always Flow to the Executive? Interbranch Oscillations in Legislative Authority, 1976–2014.

And, finally, new issues Parliamentary Affairs and Representation have been published. The former features special sections on voting age reform in the UK and opposition parties in parliament; the latter is a special issue on parties, electoral systems and political theory.

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

11. Recently on the Blog

We’ve recently published one great blog:

• Parental Leave, ‘Locum MPs’ and the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority by Nick Dickinson.

If you have an idea for a blog on some aspect of parliamentary study please get in touch with our communications officer (once we have a new one) and, in the interim, Stephen.

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 Belgium, in Government & Opposition.

The Westminster Foundation for Democracy has recently published three reports:

• Doing anti-corruption democratically by Heather Marquette;
• Rethinking strategies for an effective parliamentary role in combatting corruption by Phil Mason; and
• Post-legislative scrutiny of climate and environment legislation: Guide for parliamentary practice by David Hirst.

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:

• Cummings on stage: what does it tell us about select committees? by Marc Geddes.

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

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

1. PSA Parliaments Roundtable on the Past, Present and Future of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies
2. (Still) Hold the Date: PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference
3. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Joni Lovenduski
4. PSA Parliaments 2021 Undergraduate Essay Competition
5. House of Commons Select Committee Jobs
6. Centre for Security Research Workshop on Parliaments & Security
7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
8. 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 Roundtable on the Past, Present & Future of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies

We are very excited to be hosting a roundtable on the past, present and future of parliamentary and legislative studies on Wednesday June 9th at 2pm (London time). Our speakers are:

• Emma Crewe
• Shane Martin
• Michelle Taylor-Robinson

The PSA Parliaments team will also be revealing the initial findings of our survey on the sub-discipline, which received over 200 responses, as well as our analysis of publication and citation patterns in sub-disciplinary literature.

This is the last session of this year’s very successful online conference (even if we do say ourselves) and what more can you want from a grand finale?

The roundtable is free and all are welcome but please register beforehand in order to gain details of how to access the event.

Be there or be square.

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.

2. (Still) Hold the Date: PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference

We are pleased to announce that our next annual Conference will be held on 11-12 November 2021. Our theme will be Parliament at a Critical Juncture.

We had hoped to be able to provide full details of the conference in this newsletter but we’re still awaiting guidance from central PSA about holding in-person events, etc.

As such, for the time being, please just make a note of the dates in your diaries and hopefully we’ll be able to announce more details next month.

3. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Joni Lovunduski

We are very pleased to announce that Professor Joni Lovenduski is the sixth interviewee for our 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 love of Italy, why she likes The Irishman, and what she learnt while working in a jewellers!

If you would like to see someone answer our urgent and not-so-urgent questions, then please let us know.

4. The PSA Parliaments 2021 Undergraduate Essay Competition

There is still time to enter your undergraduate students into our 2021 Undergraduate Essay Competition!

Given the extraordinary circumstances of this academic year, we are extending our entry criteria to include any essay or assignment related to parliaments or legislatures (with a maximum word count of 4,000 words) and pushing our deadline back to 5pm, Wednesday 30th June 2021.

The winner will receive a prize of £100 and the runner-up £50, with both prizes being awarded at our 2021 PSA Parliaments conference this autumn.

Do you have a student who has produced an excellent piece of work on parliaments this year? Please submit your entry to Alexandra (all entrants must be nominated by a lecturer or seminar tutor (i.e. no self-nominations) and all entries must be made by a PSA Parliaments member).

5. House of Commons Select Committee Jobs

Two select committee jobs have recently been advertised: Director of Select Committee Scrutiny & Analysis; and Director of Select Committee Communications and Engagement.

Please see here and here for full details.

6. Centre for Security Research Workshop on Parliaments & Security

The Centre for Security Research at the University of Edinburgh is organising an online workshop on the 23rd and 24th June 2021 on the topic of Parliaments and Security.

While parliaments’ roles in security have often been neglected in practice and in scholarship, the importance of parliaments in security has received significant attention in recent years. This online workshop will take stock of the current understanding of parliaments and security, showcase cutting-edge work in this area, and set an agenda for future research. The invited papers in the workshop reflect on this broad theme from multiple perspectives and across a diverse range of specific topics.

We welcome attendance by others who are not already presenting and on the program.

For full details of the workshop and panels, please see here.

7. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye

Emma Crewe has published a book, The Anthropology of Parliaments: Entanglements in Democratic Politics, with Taylor and Francis.

Moritz Osnabrugge, Sara Hobolt and Toni Rodon have published an article, Playing to the Gallery: Emotive Rhetoric in Parliaments in the American Political Science Review.

Matthew Shugart, Matthew Bergman, Cory Struthers, Ellis Krauss and Robert Pekkanen have published a book, Party Personnel Strategies: Electoral Systems and Parliamentary Committee Assignments, with Oxford University Press.

A new issue of Parliamentary Affairs has 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

This month we’ve published two great blogs:

• Who are the ‘unsung heroes’ of Westminster? Results from a survey of MPs staff by Rebecca McKee.
• You are Unmuted: the Impact of Hybrid Proceedings on MPs Participation during the Pandemic by Wang Leung Ting.

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

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

1. Reminder about our PSA Parliaments Survey: The State of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies
2. PSA Parliaments Panel on Innovations in Theory and Method in Parliamentary Studies
3. Hold the Date: PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference
4. PSA Parliaments at #PSA21
5. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with David Judge
6. Launch of the 2021 Undergraduate Essay Competition
7. New Overview of the New Zealand Parliament Added to Our Website
8. Parliamentary Academic Fellowship Opportunity
9. Events: Bingham Lecture by Dr Hannah White & Talk by Philip Norton on Governing Britain
10. Recent Publications that have Caught Our Eye
11. 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 200 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 Panel on Innovations in Theory and Method in Parliamentary Studies

Our online panel is back after a well earned rest 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.

3. Hold the Date: PSA Parliaments 2021 Conference

We are pleased to announce that our next annual Conference will be held on 11-12 November 2021. Our theme will be Parliament at a Critical Juncture.

Full details of the conference and how to submit papers will be included in next month’s newsletter but, for the time being, please make a note of the dates in your diaries.

4. PSA Parliaments at #PSA21

This year’s PSA annual conference may have been held virtually but, as in previous years, we were delighted to host a fantastic programme of PSA Parliament panels, featuring exceptional research on parliaments and legislatures. With all four of our panels scheduled for Monday 29 March, we enjoyed a jam-packed day of parliamentary delights.

The day started with three fascinating papers covering Questions, content, and language in parliamentary proceedings. The paper givers (Mia McGraith Burns, Mark Shephard, Sebastian Ludwicki-Ziegler, Daniel Braby and Sylvia Shaw) shared their research on the Scottish and UK Parliaments, covering issues including the topic of questions at PMQs and FMQs and the impact of the hybrid Parliament in Westminster.

Our second panel Representation and diversity in the legislature featured four excellent papers exploring topics including baby leave in the House of Commons, inductions for new MPs in Westminster and Ottawa, use of Twitter by MPs, and the backgrounds of members of the House of Lords. Thanks to our paper-givers on this panel: Sarah Childs, Louise Cockram, Daniel Braby, Marius Sältzer, David Parker, Allison Reinhardt and Sheridan Johnson.

Next we explored the impact of Covid-19 with a panel on Parliaments and the Pandemic, featuring two papers exploring how the move to the hybrid House of Commons affected participation among older MPs (Wang Ling Teung) and those from smaller parties (Louise Thompson, Alexandra Meakin).

Our final panel of the day included a bumper five papers examining Parliamentary relations and powers. Inter-parliamentary relations, the relationship between parliaments and anti-corruption agencies, parliamentary impact on legislation and minority government were all explored by Margaret Arnott, Andrew Jones, Steven MacGregor, Tom Fleming, and Franklin De Vrieze.

We’re very grateful to all of our paper-givers for taking the time to share their research (we especially appreciated the Montana contingent joining us at 4.15am!). Thank you all so much.

Huge thanks also go to everyone who attended each panel and asked great questions to the panels. While the online conference platform had some challenges, it is a tribute to everyone involved that each panel still featured a stimulating conversation.

We can’t wait to get back to the great atmosphere of our PSA conference panels in person in York next year. We hope to see you then!

5. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with David Judge

We are very pleased to announce that Professor David Judge is the fifth 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 his achievements in eating biscuits, why he thought (and hoped) he might get sacked as Head of Department, and who his musical guilty pleasure is!

If you would like to see someone answer our urgent and not-so-urgent questions, then please let us know.

6. Launch of the 2021 Undergraduate Essay Competition

We’re delighted to launch our 2021 Undergraduate Essay Competition!

Given the extraordinary circumstances of this academic year, we are extending our entry criteria to include any essay or assignment related to parliaments or legislatures (with a maximum word count of 4,000 words) and pushing our deadline back to 5pm, Wednesday 30th June 2021.

The winner will receive a prize of £100 and the runner-up £50, with both prizes being awarded at our 2021 PSA Parliaments conference this autumn.

Do you have a student who has produced an excellent piece of work on parliaments this year? Please submit your entry to Alexandra (all entrants must be nominated by a lecturer or seminar tutor (i.e. no self-nominations) and all entries must be made by a PSA Parliaments member).

7. New Overview of New Zealand Parliament Added to Our Website

We have recently added a new overview to our website.

Many thanks to William Horncastle for his overview of the New Zealand Parliament!

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.

8. Parliamentary Academic Fellowship Opportunity

The Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology is looking for a Parliamentary Academic Fellow to undertake a global landscape analysis of organisations around the world providing science advice to parliaments.

Full details of the fellowship and how to apply can be found here.

9.Events: Bingham Lecture by Dr Hannah White & Talk by Philip Norton on Governing Britain

This year’s Bingham lecture will be given by Dr Hannah White, Deputy Director at the Institute of Government.

The lecture is entitled Against the clock: Brexit, COVID-19 and the constitution and will take place at 5pm on May 18th 2021.

Full details of the lecture can be found here.

Hosted by the Centre for British Politics at the University of Hull, Lord Norton of Louth (Philip Norton) will be talking to Dr Elizabeth Monaghan about his new book Governing Britain on Wednesday 5th May at 2pm.

Full details of the talk can be found here.

10. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

The Parliamentary Monitoring Group, an information service, was established in South Africa in 1995 with the aim of providing a type of Hansard for the proceedings of the more than fifty South African Parliamentary Committees. Full details of its research outputs can be found here.

Stephen Elstub and colleagues have published a series of reports on some mini-publics either run, or commissioned, by the UK Parliament and the Scottish Parliament.

• Elstub, S. & Carrick, J. (2020) Comparing Mini-Publics in the Scottish Parliament, Newcastle: Newcastle University.
• Elstub, S., Carrick, J., and Khoban, Z. (2019) Evaluation of the Scottish Parliament’s Citizens’ Jury on Land Management and the Natural Environment, Newcastle: Newcastle University.
• Elstub, S., Carrick, J., and Khoban, Z. (2019) Evaluation of the Scottish Parliament’s Citizens’ Panels on Primary Care, Newcastle: Newcastle University.
• Elstub, S. and Carrick, J. (2019) Evaluation of the Citizens’ Assembly on the Inquiry of Long-Term Funding of Adult Social Care, Newcastle: Newcastle University.

The first issue of the new International Journal of Parliamentary Studies has been published, including this cheeky little number on parliamentary roles.

A new issue of Representation has been published.

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 back and this month we’ve published:

• Calmed waters by a missed boat by Ray Snoddy.
• The Public Engagement Journey by Cristina Leston-Bandeira
• Parliaments’ Power in Authoritarian Regimes 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, Gavin Hart.

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

1. Reminder about our PSA Parliaments Survey: The State of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies
2. PSA Parliaments at #PSA21
3. PSA Parliaments Panel on Innovations in Theory and Method in Parliamentary Studies
4. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Sarah Childs
5. New Overviews of Parliaments Added to our Website
6. Webinar for Prospective PhD Students in Parliamentary Studies
7. EUGenDem Parliamentary Ethnography Workshop & Book Launch
8. Jobs & PhD Opportunities!
9. Petition: Save Kingston Politics Department
10. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye
11. 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.