Category: News

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.

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

1. PSA Parliaments Survey: The State of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies
2. PSA Parliaments Panel on Analysing Representation
3. PSA21: Register Now!
4. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Michael Rush
5. Webinar for Prospective PhD Students in Parliamentary Studies
6. Upcoming Events: Diversity Sensitive Parliaments Seminar & EUGenDem Workshops
7. Jobs in Poland and the University of Cambridge
8. Call for Chapters: Doing Fieldwork in Centres of Power
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 Parliaments Survey: The State of Parliamentary & Legislative Studies

We are very pleased to announce the launch of 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.

We encourage all our members who undertake research on (any aspect of) parliaments and legislatures to fill it in.

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 Analysing Representation

Acting as a scholarly oasis in the arid dessert of pandemic-ridden UK academia, this month’s PSA Parliaments panel is at 2pm on Wednesday 10th March.

We’ll be focusing on representation and our speakers are:

• Rebecca McKee on “Who works for MPs? Representation in the House of Commons”
• Sardar Aziz on “Iraqi Kurdistan Parliament: stuck in the middle”
• Wang Leung Ting on “Professional Representation: The Effects of Prior Occupation on MPs’ Attention on Policies”
• Fotis Fitsilis on “Digital Tools to Bridge the Representation Gap”

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. PSA21: Register Now!

There are only four weeks to go until the start of the Political Studies Association Annual International Conference, PSA21, which will be taking place virtually this year.

We have four fantastic panels for you, featuring cutting edge research on parliaments and legislatures from around the world.

Take a look at our updated papers and panels list and register now!

4. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Michael Rush

We are very pleased to announce that Professor Michael Rush is the third 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 the reason why the Public Accounts Committee features in his greatest disappointments, why there is only one way to eat a scone, and whether he’ll be the first respondent not to say that the Palace of Westminster is their favourite building!

We must also apologise to last month’s interviewee, Christine Leston-Bandeira, for including a wrong link to her answers in last month’s newsletter. To read her answers, please click on this link.

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

5. 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 on Monday 19th April at 2pm and the panel features Margaret Arnott, Sarah Childs and Marc Geddes.

More details, and how to sign up, can be found here.

Please spread the word to any undergraduate and MA students you may know!

6. Upcoming Events: Diversity Sensitive Parliaments Seminar & EUGenDem Workshops

The Global Diversities and Inequalities Research Centre at London Metropolitan University is running a seminar on Diversity Sensitive Parliaments on Wednesday March 24th 2021.

More details, including how to register, can be found here.

The EUGenDem project is organising two virtual workshops in March as part of its series on Gender, democracy and polarized politics in Europe.

1. Gendering Representative Institutions: Actors, Inner Lives, and Political Struggles on 12 March 2021 at 11am (Eastern European Time);
2. Democratic backsliding in Europe and the opposition to gender equality on 17 March 2021 at 11am (Eastern European Time).

Please click on the titles above for full details of the workshops, including how to register.

7. Jobs in Poland and at the University of Cambridge

The Willy Brandt Centre for German and European Studies at the University of Wrocław, Poland, is seeking to appoint a full-time postdoctoral researcher for the research project “Democracy in pandemic times: towards a decline or a new form of representative democracy? (PANDEMO)”.

More details about the postdoc, including how to apply, can be found here.

The Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge is seeking a Research Assistant/Associate to support a research project led by Professor Michael Kenny, exploring the British state’s approach to devolution across the UK since 1999, and contemporary pressures upon the domestic union in the wake of Brexit and Covid-19.

More details about the position, including how to apply, can be found here.

8. Call for Chapters: Doing Fieldwork in Centres of Power

Jonathan Chibois (IIAC, France) and Samuel Shapiro (Université Laval, Canada) are planning to publish an edited collection entitled Doing Fieldwork in Centres of Power: The Example of Deliberative Bodies.

The aim of the book will be to examine the methodological and epistemological challenges of field research in centres of power. The editors are seeking contributions from both young and experienced researchers, from all continents, as well as from different academic disciplines.

Full details of the edited collection, including how to submit your proposal for a chapter can be found here.

9. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

The Westminster Foundation for Democracy has recently published two reports, both by Franklin De Vrieze and Luka Glušac.

1. Combatting corruption capably: An assessment framework for parliament’s interaction with anti-corruption agencies;
2. It’s complicated: Parliament’s relationship with anti-corruption agencies in Indonesia, Pakistan, and the Maldives.

And a new issue of both the Journal of Legislative Studies has 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

Our blog is taking a breather while we do some homeschooling and catch up with the extra marking and teaching preparation that has been foisted upon us because of UK Higher Education’s masterful response to the pandemic.

We’ll hopefully be back in March firing on all cylinders!

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 Panel on Analysing Legislative Scrutiny & Behaviour
2. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Cristina Leston-Bandeira
3. New Constitution Unit Report on Control of Parliamentary Time
4. UK Study of Parliament Group Publication on Parliaments and the Pandemic
5. Book Launch: Parliaments and Post-Legislative Scrutiny
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 Panel on Analysing Legislative Scrutiny & Behaviour

Acting as an intellectual beacon in the desolation and darkness of pandemic-ridden UK academia, this month’s PSA Parliaments panel is at 2pm on Wednesday 10th February.

We’ll be focusing on the impact of legislative scrutiny and behaviour and our speakers are:

• Nokwazi Makanya on “Progress in parliamentary ‘power over the purse’: the case of South Africa”;
• Andrew Jones on “Managing coalition government in an upper house: testing the ‘keeping tabs’ theory in the House of Lords 2010-15”;
• Jack Sheldon on “Standing up for the nations and regions? Patterns of sub-state territorial representation in the UK House of Commons, 1992-2019”; and
• Margaret Arnott on “Interparliamentary Relations in the Devolved UK – Democratic Scrutiny & Accountability”.

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.

2. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Cristina Leston-Bandeira

We are very pleased to announce that Professor Cristina Leston-Bandeira is the second 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.

Hurry over to our website now to find out what she looked like as a small child, what style of ballroom dancing she prefers, and the reason she left Portugal for Hull!

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

3. New Constitution Unit Report on Control of Parliamentary Time

The Constitution Unit have published a new report by Meg Russell and Daniel Gover called Taking Back Control. The report argues that the House of Commons should govern its own time, and makes proposals for wresting such control from government.

More details, and the full report, can be found here.

4. UK Study of Parliament Group Publication on Parliaments and the Pandemic

The UK Study of Parliament Group (SPG) has published a collection of essays reflecting on the experience of parliaments in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020. The essays examine how parliaments innovated and adapted their working practices to cope with the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, and also consider the impact of COVID-19 on their ability to fulfil their roles of legislating, facilitating debate and holding government to account.

The essays focus mainly on Westminster and the UK’s devolved legislatures but also document the experience of the Crown dependencies and the New Zealand and Bahrain legislatures.

More details, and the collection of essays, can be found here.

5. Book Launch: Parliaments and Post-Legislative Scrutiny

The Westminster Foundation for Democracy are hosting a panel discussion on Post-Legislative Scrutiny to help launch the book Parliaments and Post-Legislative Scrutiny, published by Routledge, and edited by Franklin De Vrieze and Lord Norton.

Panellists will discuss the key principles and practices of this innovative practice, sharing lessons from their own experience.

The event is co-hosted by Agora, the University of Hull, and your very own friendly neighbourhood PSA specialist group, PSA Parliaments.

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

6. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

Andrew Gamble has published an intellectual memoir of Michael Moran, who died in 2018 and whose work will be familiar to many of us.

New issues of both Parliamentary Affairs and Government and Opposition have been published.

And finally for this month, Lucy Kinski has published a new book European Representation in EU National Parliaments as part of the Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics book series.

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

7. Recently on the Blog

Thanks, once again, for the great contributions made to our blog by group members and from our wider network of scholars and policy-makers. Some of our recent blogs include:

PMQs: quieter and more civilised but not more accountable by Stephane Revillet

Why it’s difficult to interview MPs – and how best to do it anyway by Philip Cowley

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 keeping safe and well and that 2021 is going to be, in general, better than 2020. We have a lot of updates for you:

1. PSA Parliaments Panel on the Impact of Digital Technologies and Social Media on Parliaments
2. PSA Parliaments Panels at PSA Annual Conference, Belfast
3. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Philip Norton
4. Women in Legislative Studies Initiative
5. Request for Help on Research Project about MPs and Parliamentary Party Groups
6. Volunteers Needed for Prospective Parliamentary Studies PhD Students Webinar
7. Call for Papers: ECPR General Conference, Innsbruck
8. Nominations Wanted for PSA Prizes
9. PSA Parliaments YouTube Channel
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 Panel on the Impact of Digital Technologies and Social Media on Parliaments

What better way can there be to start 2021 than by attending the third panel of our Online Annual Conference at 2pm on Wednesday 13th January?

We’ll be focusing on the impact of digital technologies and social media on parliaments and our speakers are:

• Ben Worthy and Stefani Langehennig on “Who is monitoring Parliament?”;
• John Bryden on “How does Facebook influence parliament?”;
• Sue Griffiths, Greg Power and Emily Death on “International approaches to virtual parliaments”; and
• Abel François, Benjamin Monnery and Olivier Rozenberg on “Members of Parliament go back to school: A natural experiment of relative performance feedback and parliamentary activities in the French Parliament”.

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

2. PSA Parliaments Panels at PSA Annual Conference, Belfast

We are very pleased to announce details of our five panels at the PSA Annual Conference.

This year the conference is taking place online between the 29th and 31st March.

Registration is now open. We look forward to seeing you virtually!

3. Urgent (and Not-So-Urgent) Questions with Philip Norton

We are very pleased to announce that Professor Philip Lord Norton of Louth is the very first 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.

Hurry over to our website now to find out who the most important people have been in Philip’s career, in which country he had a four-man bodyguard, and whether he prefers trains, planes or automobiles!

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

4. Women in Legislative Studies Initiative

A new initiative has been launched called Women in Legislative Studies.

The group is for women and non-binary scholars who have or are pursuing a PhD in political science (or related field) who research legislative politics broadly defined. Their mission statement is: “To engage, support, and promote women who study legislative politics”.

More details about the group and how to join can be found at their website.

5. Request for Help on Research Project about MPs and Parliamentary Party Groups

Prof. Gidi Rahat (Hebrew University) and Dr Chen Friedberg (Israel Democracy Institute) are undertaking some research on the roles of MPs and parliamentary party groups. As part of this project, they are running a questionnaire and are seeking a country expert to complete it on the UK.

If you are knowledgeable about parliamentary party groups in the UK Parliament and are interested in taking part in the research project, then please contact Chen directly.

6. Volunteers Needed for Prospective Parliamentary Studies PhD Students Webinar

PSA Parliaments are hoping to run one or two webinars during 2021 aimed at prospective PhD students who are interested in studying parliamentary studies at doctoral level.

If you would like to be on the panel offering advice and answering questions, please email Stephen.

We are particularly interested in recruiting current PhD students as panel volunteers, especially those who come from backgrounds under-represented in both the sub-discipline and political science more broadly. All volunteers who are PhD students will be paid for their time.

7. Call for Papers: ECPR General Conference, Innsbruck

The call for panels and papers for the next ECPR General Conference in Innsbruck (31 August-3 September 2021) is now online.

The ECPR Standing Group of Parliaments is happy to endorse the section “Parliaments under Pressure: Advances and Challenges in Parliamentary Research”. Please see here for more information.

If you would like to organise a panel or present a paper, please submit proposals through the webpage. The deadline for panel & paper proposals is February 10th 2021.

8. Nominations Wanted for PSA Prizes

The PSA are seeking nominations for their various prizes. Please consider nominating someone by the deadline of January 18th.

We are not going to nominate ourselves for best specialist group because of the comparative lull in activity during the pandemic. However, we are going to go all out to win it in 2022!

9. PSA Parliaments YouTube Channel

PSA Parliaments now has its own YouTube Channel where you can catch up with all the presentations from our online conference, including from last month’s excellent panel on analysing PMQs.

10. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

Following on from theme of our second on-line conference panel, two articles have recently been published on PMQs and holding Prime Ministers to account.

Ruxandra Serban’s article “How are prime ministers held to account? Exploring procedures and practices in 31 parliamentary democracies” has been published in the Journal of Legislative Studies, as has Alan Convery, Pavielle Haines, James Mitchell and David Parker’s article “Questioning scrutiny: the effect of Prime Minister’s Questions on citizen efficacy and trust in parliament”.

An interesting new dataset can be discovered via the pages of Government and Opposition. Tobias Remschel and Corinna Kroeber have published “Every Single Word: A New Data Set Including All Parliamentary Materials Published in Germany”.

And finally for this month, Michelle Caplan, Nicole McMahon and Christopher Alcantara have published “Representing the Constituency: Institutional Design and Legislative Behaviour”.

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

11. Recently on the Blog

Thanks, once again, for the great contributions made to our blog by group members and from our wider network of scholars and policy-makers. Some of our recent blogs include:

Parliaments and COVID-19: principles and practice; challenges and opportunities by Meg Russell

Parliaments and Peacebuilding by Rosie Frost

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 keeping safe and well. We have some updates for you, including:

1. PSA Parliaments Panel on Prime Minister’s Questions
2. Roundtable on the Past, Present and Future of Parliamentary Studies
3. PSA Parliaments Conference YouTube Playlist
4. Other Events: EUGenDem Series of Online Workshops
5. Congratulations!
6. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye
7. Coming Soon on the Blog

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

We hope you’re able to have a relaxing and restful time over Christmas and the New Year and, if you’re unable to make our panel on PMQs this month, we look forward to seeing you, hopefully in person, at some point during 2021.

1. PSA Parliaments Online Panel on Prime Minister’s Questions

A quick reminder that the second panel of our Online Annual Conference is at 2pm on Wednesday 16th December. We’ll be focusing on analysing PMQs and our speakers are:

• Stephane Revillet on “PMQs: Quieter and more civilized but not more accountable”;
• Mia McGraith Burns and Mark Shephard on “Issue ownership vs wave-riding: an evaluation of priority congruence between political parties and the public in questions to the Prime Minister”; and
• Mark Shephard and Daniel Braby on “Bringing in the constituents: do MPs use PMQs to refer to their constituents, and does the electoral context of constituencies help to explain this?”

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

Tickets are selling faster than hot cakes so you’d better hurry, hurry, hurry if you don’t want to miss out!

Full details of the other conference panels can be found on our website.

2. Save the Date! Roundtable on the Past, Present and Future of Parliamentary Studies

We have added an extra panel to our PSA Parliaments Annual Conference. On the 9th June 2021, we are holding a roundtable on the past, present and future of parliamentary studies and we have some very special guest speakers:

• Prof. Emma Crewe (SOAS, University of London);
• Prof. Shane Martin (University of Essex); and
• Prof. Michelle Taylor-Robinson (Texas A&M University)

This promises to be an excellent way to end our conference and celebrate getting to the end of a very difficult academic year. You can book your tickets here.

3. PSA Parliaments Conference YouTube Playlist

If, for some reason, you missed the first panel of our PSA Parliaments Annual Conference, then you can now watch the papers on our PSA Parliaments Conference YouTube Playlist.

Papers from subsequent panels will be added throughout the year. 

4. Other Events

Starting in December 2020, the EUGenDem team are organising a series of online workshops for both academics and practitioners to debate ‘Gender, democracy and polarized politics in Europe’.

The first workshop ‘European Parliament’s political groups in turbulent times: New research avenues’ will take place on 15 December 2020 at 3PM (EET) on Zoom and feature some key research coming out of the EUGenDem project. The speakers are:

• Johanna Kantola: Gender and democracy in European Parliament’s party group practices
• Valentine Berthet, Anna Elomäki, and Barbara Gaweda: Political dynamics, power struggles, and intra-group policy formation in the European Parliament
• Cherry Miller: ‘Ethno, ethno, what?’ How Parliamentary Ethnography can help us to better understand Parliament’s Political Groups

See here for more details and to register.

The workshop sessions in 2021 will include talks by key scholars working on the European Parliament; gendered parliaments; democratic backsliding; gender policy issues; impacts of Covid-19 on parliamentary politics and gender policy; and parliamentary ethnography.  The full program can be found here.

5. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

Edward Elgar have published a new Handbook of Parliamentary Studies, edited by Cyril Benoît and Olivier Rozenberg.

When buying the Handbook from the Edward Elgar website, members of the PSA Parliaments specialist group can receive a 35% discount by applying the discount code PARL35 before checkout (yet more proof of why it pays to be part of your friendly neighbourhood specialist group).

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.

6. Congratulations!

Congratulations to PSA Parliaments member, Tom Caygill, who has secured a lectureship in politics at the Department of Social & Political Sciences at Nottingham Trent University!

7. Coming soon on the Blog!

The blog has been taking a little break this month. It’s nothing to worry about. We just need to regain some poise after all the excitement of providing an excellent blended learning experience in a Covid-secure educational environment.

We’re going to be back in December with a vengeance so please keep an eye out for blogs on some of the papers from our first conference panel on the impact of Covid-19 on parliaments.

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

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

1. PSA Parliaments Panel on Covid-19
2. PSA Annual Conference update
3. Other Events
4. Call for Papers
5. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye
6. Recently on the Blog

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

Best wishes

Stephen (@Stephen_R_Bates), Alexandra (@A_Meakin), Seán (@S_Haughey), Gavin (@GavinHart10) and Caroline (@CarolineBha)

1. PSA Parliaments Online Panel on the Impact of Covid-19 on Parliaments

A quick reminder that the first panel of our Online Annual Conference is at 2pm on Wednesday 11th November.We’ll be focusing on how COVID-19 has impacted on parliaments and our speakers are:

• Meg Russell on “The principles and practice of parliamentary functioning post-COVID-19: challenges and opportunities”;
• Philip Norton on “Parliaments and informal space: the unseen impact of crisis”;
• Dalila Maulide on “Inter-parliamentary cooperation in times of pandemics”; and
• Kuffour Nimako Anning on “The past, present and future debates of Ghana’s parliament: making it possible amidst COVID-19”

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

Tickets are selling faster than hot cakes so you’d better hurry, hurry, hurry if you don’t want to miss out!

Full details of the other conference panels can be found on our website.

2. 2021 PSA Annual Conference Update

Thank you to everyone who has submitted paper and panel proposals for our Specialist Group panels at next year’s PSA Conference. We were really impressed with the standard and number of proposals we received, including papers on a diverse range of subjects and legislatures. Our draft panels have been submitted to the PSA and we are currently sending out notifications of acceptance. We will confirm details of panels and dates/times once confirmed by the conference convenors – reminder that the conference will now be taking place entirely online. Thank you again and we look forward to a great selection of panels next year.

3. Other Events

The Constitution Unit are holding a webinar, Constitutional Reform, Then and Now, on Tuesday 3rd November at 18.00.

Speakers include Jack Straw, Professor Francesca Klug OBE, and David Gauke.

More details here.  
 

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The Centre for Political Ethnomethodology at the University of Southampton are hosting a talk by Marc Geddes (Edinburgh) about his book, Dramas at Westminster, on Thursday 5th November at 13.00.

More details here.
 

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The first conference event of the Parliaments Buildings Conference is taking place on the 12th and 13th of November. 

More details here.

4. Calls for Papers

European Conference of Politics and Gender, hosted by the University of Ljubljana (7-9 July 2021)

A timely section: ‘Parliaments, governments and parties as gendered organisations’, at the bi-annual European Conference of Politics and Gender, warmly welcomes panels and paper submissions.

Further information on the CfP can be found here. The deadline for panel and paper proposals is 8th December 2020.

For any questions about the section, please do get in contact with the section co-chairs, Michal Smrek (Uppsala University, Sweden), Josefina Erikson (Uppsala University, Sweden), or Cherry Miller (Tampere University, Finland).
 

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3rd Annual UK Political Psychology Conference (11-15 Jan 2021)
 
This year’s annual political psychology conference will take place virtually and will draw on best practice in its use of both synchronous and asynchronous content. This year, we invite abstracts on any of the following:
 
1.Political attitudes, beliefs and ideology;
2.Political elites and leadership;
3.Conflict and security;
4.Government and governance;
5.Emotions;
6.Populism and the people;
7.Political psychology of inequalities.
8. Methods
 
The conference will take place over the course of one week (11th-15th January 2021). Successful applicants will be required to provide a pre-recorded presentation; there will then be live roundtable discussions amongst the panellists with opportunities for audience Q&A. This format has been purposefully designed to maximize the accessibility of the conference for potential delegates, whilst allowing for more detailed and informative debate amongst presenters in the live sessions.
 
Submissions should contain an abstract of no more than 200 words, a brief professional biography of the presenter, and contact details. Deadline for submissions is midday on Friday 27th November.
 
Submissions should be sent electronically via email to the convenor in charge of your desired section. Please send your submission to either: Dr Raynee Gutting (raynee.gutting@essex.ac.uk – political attitudes); Dr James Weinberg (james.weinberg@sheffield.ac.uk – political elites); Dr Tereza Capelos (T.Capelos@bham.ac.uk – conflict); Dr Ben Seyd (B.J.Seyd@kent.ac.uk – governance); Donatella Bonansinga (d.bonansinga@pgr.bham.ac.uk – emotions);Dr Kesi Mahendran (kesi.mahendran@open.ac.uk – populism) or Dr Ashley Weinberg (a.weinberg@salford.ac.uk – inequalities). If you would like to present on the methods panel, please email Dr Todd Hartman (t.k.hartman@sheffield.ac.uk).

5. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

Louise Thompson’s book The end of the small party? Change UK and the challenges of parliamentary politics has been published with Manchester University Press.

A new issue of the Journal of Legislative Studies has been published.

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

6. Recently on the Blog

Thanks, once again, for the great contributions made to our blog by group members and from our wider network of scholars and policy-makers. Some of our recent blogs include:

• From anti-terrorism legislation to COVID emergency laws: Can sunset clauses live up to their promise? by Franklin De Vrieze and Sean Molloy
• Braking the law: Is there, and should there be, an executive veto over laws made by parliament? by Paul Evans
• How did parliamentary procedure change while Theresa May was Prime Minister? by Thomas Fleming

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

Stephen (@Stephen_R_Bates), Alexandra (@A_Meakin), Seán (@S_Haughey), Gavin (@GavinHart10) and Caroline (@CarolineBha)

1. 2021 PSA Annual Conference, Belfast: Call for Papers

We have extended our Call for Papers for the eight panels we can host until Thursday 8th October.

The 2021 PSA Annual Conference will be held in Belfast with a theme of “Resilience. Expertise. Hope”. Papers can be presented either in person or remotely. Full details of the conference 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 this form for papers or this form for panels to Alexandra and Stephen by Thursday 8th October.

We welcome papers from PhD students through to professors and from both academics and practitioners. We are fully committed to avoiding manels.

2. PSA Parliaments Online Panel on the Impact of Covid-19 on Parliaments

The first panel of our Online Annual Conference is at 2pm on Wednesday 11th November.We’ll be focusing on how COVID-19 has impacted on parliaments and our speakers are:

• Meg Russell on “The principles and practice of parliamentary functioning post-COVID-19: challenges and opportunities”;
• Philip Norton on “Parliaments and informal space: the unseen impact of crisis”;
• Dalila Maulide on “Inter-parliamentary cooperation in times of pandemics”; and
• Kuffour Nimako Anning on “The past, present and future debates of Ghana’s parliament: making it possible amidst COVID-19”

All panels are free and all are welcome but please register beforehand so we can send you details of how to access the event.

Tickets are selling faster than hot cakes so you’d better hurry, hurry, hurry if you don’t want to miss out!

Full details of the other conference panels can be found on our website.

3. Job: Research Assistant at the IPU

The Inter-Parliamentary Union wishes to establish a network of students to provide assistance to research activities for their IPU-UNDP Global Parliamentary Report. It is expected that the network will contain up to 5 students from different countries, with a range of language skills, working under the supervision of the Lead Researcher and in cooperation with colleagues from IPU and UNDP.

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

4. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

Sylvia Shaw’s book Women, Language and Politics has been published with Cambridge University Press.

Karen Celis and Sarah Childs’ book Feminist Democratic Representation has been published with Oxford University Press.

A new issue of Parliamentary Studies has been published, featuring a special section on party regulation and operation outside the bounds of the country of origin.

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

We hope that, wherever you are, you are keeping safe and well and that you had a good summer. We have a bumper number of updates for you, including:

1. Our annual conference
2. 2021 PSA Annual Conference, Belfast
3. Changes to the PSA Parliaments team
4. Website revamp
5. Essay prize winners announced
6. Supporting colleagues on precarious contracts
7. Jobs and internships
8. Other Events and Call for Papers
9. Recently on the Blog
10. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

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

Best wishes

Stephen (@Stephen_R_Bates), Alexandra (@A_Meakin), Seán (@S_Haughey), Gavin (@GavinHart10) and Caroline (@CarolineBha)

1. 2020 PSA Parliaments Annual Conference

Unfortunately, we have had to postpone this year’s annual conference because of the pandemic. Instead, we intend to run a series of monthly on-line panels throughout the academic year. More details as soon as the timetable is finalised!

2. 2021 PSA Annual Conference, Belfast: Call for Papers

The 2021 PSA Annual Conference will be held in Belfast with a theme of “Resilience. Expertise. Hope” . It will be a hybrid event which will, apparently, “blend the digital and physical worlds together to produce the opportunities and interactions of a physical conference, with the added accessibility of an online event”. Full details of the conference can be found here.

PSA Parliaments can host up to 8 panels at the conference.

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) to Alexandra and Stephen by Monday 5th October.

We welcome papers from PhD students through to professors and we are fully committed to avoiding manels.

3. Changes to the PSA Parliaments Team: Thank you Louise and welcome back Alexandra!

After 6 years, Louise Thompson has stepped down from convening the PSA Parliaments Group. We want to say a huge thank you to Louise for all her incredible work rebuilding the group and taking it to award-winning heights. Louise has been central to growing the membership of the group, creating a welcoming and stimulating atmosphere, co-editing Exploring Parliament and leading on the group’s Essay Competition and conferences. Thank you Louise!

Louise will be replaced by Alexandra Meakin, who was previously the group’s communications officer. Alexandra completed her PhD at the University of Sheffield on parliamentary governance and the Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster at the end of 2019 and is returning from maternity leave this month to work as a Research Assistant on Louise Thompson’s ESRC project ‘Rethinking the role of small parties in the UK’s parliaments’, in addition to continuing to research Restoration and Renewal. Prior to starting her doctoral studies, Alexandra spent over a decade working for MPs and the House of Commons. Follow her on Twitter.

4. Website Revamp!

As some of you may have already noticed, we have not only revamped our website but we have also got a new address: psaparliaments.org

As part of the revamp, we have put all of our overviews of parliaments and legislatures onto two maps. If you would like to contribute an overview for a jurisdiction that is not yet covered, then please email Alexandra or Stephen.

We are especially keen to have overviews for the parliaments and legislatures in the British Isles that are not yet covered (for example, Jersey and the Isle of Man). It is also to our great shame that we do not have an overview of the UK Houses of Parliament on our website yet.

We have also launched an Ask an Expert service which is your chance to ask (and maybe answer) questions about any aspect of parliamentary activity.

A prize (yet to be determined) will be awarded to whomsoever is the first person to correctly identify the ten legislatures featured in the black and white photos at the top of each of the main pages (this doesn’t include the photo on the Annual Conference page which is of the Council House in the greatest city in the world, Birmingham). Two clues to get you started: not all the buildings are still in existence and there is at least one legislature from each continent (excluding Antarctica).

5. Undergraduate Essay Competition Prize Winners Announced!

We are pleased to announce that Jessica Rose, formerly of the University of Birmingham, is the winner of our 2020 essay competition.

Professor Robert Hazell, chair of this year’s judging panel, praised the winning essay for its focus ‘on an original topic, with detailed research and analysis, beautifully presented in the form of a Briefing Paper from the House of Commons Library’.

We also extend our congratulations to Joshua Funnell, formerly of Royal Holloway, University of London, who was this year’s runner-up.

The judging panel commended Joshua’s essay, noting that it focussed ‘on an interesting topic, MPs’ use of Facebook and Twitter, and the analysis convincingly showed that MPs use different social media for different purposes’.

All essays were anonymised and judged by a panel of academics and practitioners: Professor Robert Hazell (University College London and Chair of the Panel), Dr Adam Evans (House of Commons) and Dr Louise Thompson (University of Manchester).

6. Supporting Colleagues on Precarious Contracts

The pandemic has had an impact on all of us but perhaps especially those colleagues who are on, or who were on, precarious contracts. PSA Parliaments would like to offer as much help as possible to those colleagues over the coming months. As a starting point, we hope to be able to offer:

A mentoring scheme for parliamentary scholars

The purpose of this scheme would be for for group members with secure roles to read over job applications and/or support precarious staff in their job hunts. We would like to offer this scheme especially to those colleagues who wish to work in academia who are either currently without an institution, or on a fixed-term contract at an institution without other parliamentary specialists. If you would like either to be a mentor or a mentee, then please email Stephen and/or Alexandra.

A parliamentary-studies-jobs.ac.uk

If colleagues have a research budget or teaching opportunities in the area of parliamentary studies, then please let us know and we can advertise through our newsletter and on Twitter and Facebook.

We have other ideas which are in the pipeline which hopefully we can announce over the next few months. If you have any other ideas, then please let us know.

7. Jobs and Internships

The Institute for Government is inviting applications for a senior researcher position. More details can be found here.

Applications are now open for the 2020-21 PSA-Parliament PhD internships. This joint initiative between the PSA and House of Commons Committee Office provides a fantastic opportunity for PSA members, currently studying toward their PhD, to gain some real-world experience working at Westminster. More details can be found here.

8. Other Events and Calls for Papers

The Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF) is commissioning a study on the role of Parliaments in linking Security Sector Reform and the Sustainable Development Goals. The publication will be approximately 30,000 words, and for each paper DCAF is offering a 5,600 CHF honorarium. Further information on the Call for Papers be found here.

The Canadian Study of Parliament Group is holding a special event entitled “Behind the Scenes of American Impeachment Trials: In conversation with the Parliamentarian of the US Senate” on Monday, September 14th at noon Eastern (online). You can register for the event here (cost: $10).

9. Recently on the Blog

Thanks once again for the great contributions made to our blog by group members and from our wider network of scholars and policy-makers. Some of our recent blogs include:

What does ‘evidence’ mean to MPs and officials in the UK House of Commons? – Marc Geddes

Arrested Development? The Limits of Parliamentary Development in Chaotic Political Systems – Victoria Hasson & Graeme Ramshaw

2016–17: Insights from the last ‘normal’ parliamentary session? – Ruth Dixon

Will the Ukrainian parliament and anti-corruption agency step up to the task of combating corruption? – Franklin De Vrieze and Luka Glusac

Why there is no such thing as the ‘Westminster model’ – Meg Russell and Ruxandra Serban

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

10. Recent Publications that have Caught our Eye

Emmeline Ledgerwood has published an article entitled MPs on the Subject of STEMM: What Can Oral History Tell Us? in Parliamentary History.

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

Meg Russell and Ruxandra Serban have published an article entitled The Muddle of the ‘Westminster Model’: A Concept Stretched Beyond Repair in Government and Opposition.

The Journal of Legislative Studies has published a Special Issue on Parliaments and Post-Legislative Scrutiny edited by Franklin De Vrieze & Philip Norton.

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

Dear all,

We hope that, wherever you are, you are keeping safe and well. Due to some upcoming deadlines, we have a short bonus newsletter for you this month, including:

1. POST’s Parliamentary Academic Fellowship Scheme: Applications are open
2. House of Lords Constitution Committee inquiry into the constitutional implications of Covid-19: Call for evidence
3. Our Annual Conference: Call for Papers/Blogs

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

Best wishes,
Stephen (@Stephen_R_Bates), Louise (@LouiseVThompson), Gavin (@GavinHart10) and Seán (@S_Haughey)